


The Science of Space Law

by ncruuk



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-03-26 05:14:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 49,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13850844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncruuk/pseuds/ncruuk
Summary: Article 57 of the Shadow Proclamation prohibited the destruction of a Level 5 planet if no law was broken.  There was just a small catch - there were over 2300 specific articles within the Shadow Proclamation, scattered across countless treaties and conventions.Some, like Article 29.8, were highly specific and prohibited something Earth couldn't do in the first place, making compliance straightforward.Some, like the Intergalactic Duty Arrangements for Gastropods and Fungi, were rather trickier:  Ambassadors aren’t taxed, but cooking ingredients and aphrodisiacs are, and it's quite the diplomatic minefield if you impound the Ambassador and give diplomatic immunity to their lunch.  Or end humanity.At first glance, it's hardly the stuff of romance and yet, it turned out to be quite the scientific affair...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The latest addition to my Kate/Osgood Dr Who set of stories. The 'headcanon' does accumulate across all the stories. [There's a 'reader's guide' post I put together on tumblr if you would like a bit more guidance on how all the stories interlink.](http://ncruuk.tumblr.com/post/153132349737/ncruuks-kateosgood-fics-a-readers-guide) As always, the more of my stories you've already read, the more this story will make sense.
> 
> (Flashback scenes are in italics)

 

 

“...and because of this, we must continue to permit these toxic aliens...”

 

“Venomous.”

 

“...I...excuse me?”  Not having expected an interruption, the bespectacled bowtie wearing stuffed shirt of a nincompoop spluttered to a halt and glared at his audience, trying to work out who’d ruined his lecture.  He thought he’d made it very clear he wasn’t taking questions.

 

“Venomous.”  Kate Stewart didn’t move from where she was stood at the back of the very large Committee Room, which was more accurately described as an auditorium, since it was capable of seating more than 150, a feat it was currently demonstrating.

 

“I don’t know…” Flustered, the speaker failed to notice how his audience reacted to the crisp English accent that managed to fill the large space with ease and somehow not sound louder than an ordinary conversational voice.  He’d been about to challenge this heckler’s authority to interrupt him, but she didn’t give him the chance.

 

“Clearly.  Or you wouldn’t have called the Dropanturi toxic.”  They were an interesting species, one that Kate was fairly certain had proactively never visited Earth, being somewhat reluctant travellers in their own right, but they did crop up in cultural references….including on Tronkie’s favourite restaurant menu where they apparently tasted ‘a bit like treacle’ and were considered a delicacy, as long as the venom sacs were removed before cooking.  Putting her briefcase down on the floor by her feet, fairly confident that she was standing in shadow, Kate decided she’d best listen to a little more.

 

“Yes, well…”  Returning to the relative security of the presenter’s lectern, he resumed his lecture, deciding that the heckler was best ignored.  After all, since he didn’t recognise the voice, it wasn’t someone from his department so they could hardly count as mattering.  In fact, it was probably some junior assistant making mischief or something…

 

* * *

 

“...and those are my Technology Board papers from last month…” As she spoke, Osgood passed the next paper folder on her stack over to Fran who, after automatically checking that the contents matched the folder name, made a note on her checklist and smiled at Osgood.

 

“Thanks Osgood.”  Fran put the folder, and her checklist, down on the end of her desk.  “This always feels…”  Kate’s PA paused, trying to bring herself to actually say what she really felt, knowing that Osgood out of everyone was probably one of the few that wouldn’t laugh at her, and, of the people she’d even consider admitting this to, about the only one that wouldn’t interrupt her before she’d finished plucking up courage to verbalise her thought.  “...like the most alien bit of my job.”

 

“It is, actually.”  Re-adjusting her grip on the remaining stack of papers and folders that she was holding, Osgood automatically registered Fran’s look of surprise but didn’t react to it, instead just continuing to explain herself more fully.  “Our Information Management policies must comply with the Data Protection Acts and are technically subject to the oversight of the Information Commissioner.”  Osgood did notice Fran’s jaw drop and her sort of squeak of disbelief at that rather mundane and normal piece of information.  “However the Information Commissioner isn’t permitted to know about us, so it all becomes a bit tautological… we must hold information in a manner consistent with the relevant regulations and laws which include conditions under which the Information Commissioner may require us to release or destroy information.  However the UK Information Commissioner is not a position to which UNIT has an agreed method of disclosure or acknowledgment.”

 

There was a pause while Fran, like the very best of the career Civil Servants who found themselves transferred to UNIT, mentally translated both the Civil Service and UNIT ‘double speak’ into the plain meanings.

 

“Trust us, we’re following your rules but we’ll never prove it because our rules don’t allow you to know we exist?”

 

“Exactly.”  Smiling with genuine delight that Fran had understood her so clearly, Osgood was already starting to look back at her remaining papers, thinking they could resume their archiving.

 

“But if that’s the case…” Fran caught her lip when she realised that the Senior Scientist had clearly presumed the topic was closed, only to breathe out gently with relief when she saw Osgood look back up at her, clearly happy to continue talking about it if Fran still had questions.  “Why do we archive the individual papers?  The standard policies only require one hard copy set and even then it’s only short term until the digital copies are properly indexed.”

 

“There was a scandal in the 16th century…” Osgood considered the knotwork in the wood of the doorframe into Kate’s office for a moment, following the swirl of the wood with her eyes until she’d properly remembered the relevant point.  “Some concern that the decision making was being influenced by circulating non-identical copies of the papers.  So it was decided that every voting member must surrender their copies after the decisions had been taken.”  Osgood shrugged as she looked back at Fran.  “It’s easier to continue - no one wants a time traveller accusing us of corruption - those appeal processes are almost impossible to complete now.”  Osgood turned a delicate shade of grey at the thought of them.

 

“Oh?  Do they use lots of vellum?” Fran knew that they found sourcing the vellum that some of the more timeless UNIT administration had to be completed on was really rather challenging, meaning that wherever possible, Osgood always tried to encourage them away from the more verbose bits of vellum based admin.  It wasn’t the traditional remit of the Senior Scientist, but it was something that had attracted Osgood’s attention early on in her UNIT career and as a result, she’d rather collected it as a specialist subject.  That she was rather more approachable and patient than Brockenthwaite, the Tower Librarian and Archivist, who was the other more official source of answers on such administrative protocols, was also something that Fran and many others also appreciated.

 

“A bit… but the Chancellor’s blood must be used in the ink.”

 

“And the Chancellor today…oh.” Fran joined Osgood in turning a slightly delicate metaphorical green, knowing as Osgood did, that while the UNIT organisation no longer functioned under the ancient hierarchies by name, all contemporary roles were matched to the ancient hierarchies as a matter of routine for just such occasions.  In fact, it was one of the more esoteric parts of the HR team’s responsibilities that had to be completed each year, along with the more familiar diversity statistics and salary bench-marking.  Fran knew she was technically also answerable to both ‘Sovereign’s Clerk’ and ‘Chancellor’s Usher’ alongside her more day-to-day title of either ‘PA to Kate Stewart’ or, if they were being presumed to be part of the MoD, ‘the Brigadier’s Bag Carrier’.

 

“Quite.”  Osgood, as a general and absolute rule, completely refused to do any of the administrative processes that required bits of Kate or anyone else on the UNIT staff for that matter, but especially Kate, to be permanently donated to the cause.

 

Before Fran could work out what else to say, she caught a glimpse of her 'new email' alert just disappearing from the bottom corner of her screen.  "Just a sec Osgood..."  Putting aside her checklist, Fran reached for the computer mouse and pulled up her email programme so she could satisfy her curiosity.

 

"Problem?" asked Osgood, refraining from out and out peering at Fran's screen, but instead slipping her hand into her trouser pocket where her phone still was, checking to see if whatever alert it was that had caught Fran's attention had also triggered her phone to vibrate.

 

"The boss has emailed..."  Frowning, Fran glanced at the time on the screen, checked it matched the clock on the wall showing 'Tower time' and then looked at the adjacent clock which showed that what time it was for Kate in Geneva.  "...but she's supposed to be meeting Mr and Mr Minister..."  That Kate Stewart had replanned her day wasn’t a surprise - Fran had long become used to Kate’s schedule being indicative at best and an interesting suggestion the rest of the time, but she usually found about the changes of plan from the rest of UNIT or Whitehall before she heard directly from her boss.

 

"Ah."  Extracting her phone, Osgood quickly scanned the various notifications and messages that it had collected since she'd left her own desk about ten minutes ago.  While she wasn't one to prejudge a situation, it did seem unlikely that Kate had stumbled on a civilisation or planet ending crisis as whatever prompted her to email Fran hadn't reached Osgood...yet, but a reason for why Kate wasn't in her meeting had made it to her emails.  "The Minister's in quarantine for something..." Osgood tried to work out a suitable summary for the scientifically accurate but diplomatically rather excessively detailed update that had been sent by one of her team earlier in the day.  "...contagious..."  Closing the email abruptly, Osgood reached for her inhaler and took a precautionary puff.

 

"Oh dear, is he alright?"  Fran had learned early on in her UNIT career that humans and visiting aliens could catch the strangest of things far too easily if they weren't careful, so strict quarantine rules were in place and quickly implemented at the first sign of symptoms.

 

"He will be..."  Osgood put her phone away, certain she was probably blushing, but knowing Fran really did need to know the whole situation so she could avoid making any diplomatic missteps when she tried to rearrange the missed meeting.  "...and I think he'll be rather more faithful to his husband in the future, assuming he's not divorced by the time the rash has cleared up."

 

"I'll stick to individual coffees at Central Command rather than accept any two-for-one skiing invites then."  Fran made a mental note to update her diary planning notes (kept in her own unique code that ensured prying eyes didn't get any gossip) - Kate's schedule was messy enough at the best of times that two members of an alien delegation who were happy to have their individual meetings with the UNIT Chief Scientific Officer combined because they were married was the sort of diplomatic gift Kate generally liked her to accept.  "The 'theatre' is officially called 'The Hamilton Committee Room isn't it?"

 

"If it's Kate calling it the Theatre, yes."  Osgood put her inhaler back in her pocket and adjusted her glasses.  All of the main meeting rooms in Geneva Central Command were named after UNIT grandees, and Kate never used any of them, preferring more impersonal identifiers like 'theatre' or 'Lake Room'.  This latter room was a rather pleasant small meeting room capable of seating 6-8 people around a good sized table in comfortable chairs and a lake view for half of them, and was officially known as the Lethbridge-Stewart Strategy Room after Kate’s father.  

 

"Thanks..."  Switching to a different application, Fran quickly pulled up the centralised room booking system and set about answering Kate's question about what the official name of the event currently happening in the 'theatre' was.  "Why would she be interested in the Intergalactic Duty Arrangements for Gastropods and Fungi?"


	2. Chapter 2

Feeling her phone vibrating in her pocket, Kate pulled her reading glasses down from where she’d perched them on the top of her head with her right hand as she reached for the phone with her left.  Wincing when she felt her knuckles catch the wall she was leaning against, Kate put her battered left hand back in her trouser pocket and held the phone in her right hand while she looked at Fran’s reply, apparently oblivious to the speaker’s continuing drone.

 

“...and that just leaves these…”  His confidence returned following the earlier rude interruption, he glanced back at the projection of the final gastropod he was talking about today.  “...visually indistinct from the previous example but these are poisonous...”

 

Kate’s head snapped up and she pulled off her reading glasses in one quick move that unfortunately saw her throw her phone down the central aisle, though being one of Osgood’s new ‘alien-proof’ models, it merely bounced another three rows forward rather than shattered.

 

“For heavens’ sake, no it isn’t.”

 

“What?”  Shielding his eyes from the bright light of the projector, he tried to see who this woman was who kept interrupting.

 

“That mollusc is not poisonous.”  It was unfortunate, but Kate couldn’t for the life of her remember how to pronounce the damn thing’s name, only remembering that if she got it wrong it was the Yurtapi word for the female reproductive system.  Admittedly, she was probably the only person who knew that, but she’d not asked Fran for a delegate list, just the name of this presentation, and she had no desire to create a diplomatic incident - three before lunch was quite enough, and her meeting after next was guaranteed to generate at least two.  “There is however, a microscopic lichen coating the shell which is toxic.  That is a picture of a shelled and cooked or cured example.”  She put her glasses back on and considered the projected image carefully, “...a  cured example, as it’s the wrong colour for cooked.”  Despite the photograph being in black and white, the contrast between the stripes was clear to see and far too distinct to be cooked, as cooking saw some of the contrasting colour fade, giving a more uniform appearance.  

 

“So?”  He’d meant to challenge her, not her statement, but there was something about the way she continued to stride down the stairs in the centre of the auditorium that wrong-footed him.  He still had no idea who she was, but was starting to get a sense from how some of the delegates were reacting to her interruption that she was enough of a ‘somebody’ that he might not win any argument.

 

“So once the specimen has been shelled, it is safe to consume.”  Kate bent down and picked up her phone, pocketing it.  “Alive, it is a non-poisonous mollusc whose shell is the host for a lichen that is highly toxic.  For many species including humans, there is no need to ingest it to feel the effects - ‘skin’ contact is enough, so handling without the proper precautions is extremely unwise.”  Deciding that, since she was now only three rows from the front she should probably just keep going, Kate carried on down the stairs and went up on to the stage, glad of the opportunity to dump her rather heavy briefcase on the table, noting with interest it had been upgraded to incorporate the new computer system.  “Which means that a specimen still with its shell is considered to be toxic because of the lichen assumed to be present, but the actual mollusc is not poisonous.”

 

“How poisonous?”  This question came from a rather serious looking woman in the front row who wasn’t in the least perturbed by Kate’s sudden appearance or interruption.  “The lichen I mean.”

 

“Toxicity varies depending on the organism coming into contact with the toxin.  For example, if you are a Yurtapi with no pelt issues, it’s a mild sting probably equivalent to a human receiving a nettle sting or a nasty case of laryngitis if ingested.  If you’re human?”  Kate put both hands in her trouser pockets and took a moment to consider the audience as a whole, completely disregarding the speaker now she’d made it as far as the stage, which suited most of the audience absolutely fine.  “The antidote is four galaxies away.”  She felt it was wiser to not mention that you’d already be dead, nor that UNIT didn’t actually know how to procure the antidote, nevermind get it delivered.  

 

“Ouch.”  The look on her question-asker’s face told her more than enough about what the audience did and didn’t know in this area, prompting Kate to abandon her half hearted plan of getting some lunch from the lobby coffee shop and complete her hijack of this lecture.   

 

“Honest show of hands, who’s confused about the difference between venomous and poisonous?”  She watched as about two-thirds of the audience nervously put their hands up.  “Okay, question to the rest of you.”  Kate waited while hands were lowered and smug faces turned nervous.  “Put your hand up if you’re prepared to come up here and explain it with the help of a pop quiz...I don’t mind English, French or German.”  

 

Smiling wryly at the total absence of raised hands, she began to take her jacket off, allowing those at the very front to see her security ID badge hanging from the belt loop on her trousers, prompting a whisper to run to the back row as everyone made sure their neighbours knew this really was  _ her... _

 

“In that case, while you won’t find a bigger fan of the Intergalactic Duty Arrangements in the building than me, I’d rather you didn’t accidentally kill yourselves during the inspections, so…”  She looked at the speaker who really shouldn’t have been allowed to deliver this particular lecture without being rock solid on this rather fundamental basic in her view, trying desperately to remember his name but knowing she’d probably never known it in the first place.  The last time she’d known the names of the majority of the Revenue Department...that just made her feel ancient.  “...do you have a pen I can use for the screen please?  I think it’s time for us to start with some basic science revision...”

  


 


	3. Chapter 3

“I’m not sure I’d call it interest exactly…” Osgood took off her glasses and started to polish the lenses while she tried to work out what was the best way of explaining what she thought was probably happening right now in Geneva.  “...not anymore at least.”  She put her glasses back on and blinked at the sudden brightness now she’d removed the latest grime accumulation.  “But it’s a particularly complicated implementation that’s not easy to get right.”

 

“Intergalactic Duty Arrangements?”  Fran wasn’t sure she’d ever heard of them prior to just now, but she guessed they sounded a bit like tax rules and she knew from past experience working in other departments how complicated those could be.  Somehow, she didn’t think adding aliens made the subject more straightforward.

 

“Well, yes, they are but...it’s more the gastropods and fungi…” Seeing Fran’s frown increase, Osgood realised she needed to elaborate.  “...ah, uh, slugs, snails and mushrooms, sort of.”

 

“There’s a two hour lecture for over one hundred people on mushrooms and slugs?”

 

“And snails.  Mostly the snails I imagine, as they’re some of the trickiest I think...the Duty Arrangements for the importing and exporting of them is basic maths, but identifying what is being imported or exported is where the problems start.”  At least, that’s what she’d thought at the time based on Kate’s grumbling.  “Knowing which ones to not touch because they will kill you is also quite important, especially if there’s contraband involved…”  Smuggling was still a lucrative career option in large parts of several galaxies, creating a whole different set of problems for the Galactic Laws. not least because one species’ aphrodisiac was another species’ deadly killer.

 

“How do you know this?”  Fran had asked the question before realising she’d almost certainly crossed all the lines and found the point at which she really had offended Osgood.  “Sorry, I…”

 

“It’s fine.  Really.”  Osgood smiled and nodded, trying to reassure Fran that she hadn’t been offended by the question.  “I…” Realising what her answer was, she blushed before deciding she didn’t mind Fran knowing the truth.  “...paid attention.”

 

“To lectures on snails?”  Fran wasn’t sure that Osgood could be that committed to science, could she?  And even if she was, Osgood wasn’t the sort of person who blushed at admitting to having a scientific interest in something...although attending lectures on snails did sound a bit extreme, even by UNIT standards.

 

“To the lecturer…”  

* * *

 

 

 

_“Kate?”  Blinking the last bits of sleep from her eyes, Osgood continued into the room, wondering what had caused her girlfriend of a fortnight to be awake and out of bed at somewhere between 3 and 4 in the morning._

_“Sorry.”  Kate’s instinctive smile at seeing Osgood faltered when she realised that she’d woken up enough to put on her pyjamas before coming to find her.  “I thought if I came through here I wouldn’t wake you.”_

_“You didn’t wake me…”  Stopping by the end of the couch that Kate was curled up on, Osgood caught her lip with her teeth, trying to work out why that wasn’t entirely right.  “...I think it was the lack of you that woke me up.”  She couldn’t be absolutely certain, not without being able to go back in time obviously, but it was a reasonable hypothesis.  “Did I wake you?”  She didn’t think she was a snorer, at least, Kate hadn’t yet said anything about it.  And the non-Kate sample population was insufficiently sized to be able to draw an adequate evidence based conclusion, presuming a ‘relationship confidence factor’ threshold value was met obviously, with no one volunteering negative views about a partner too early in a relationship…  Blinking quickly, Osgood refocused her attention on Kate before she needed to ask her to repeat her answer._

_“No...”  Kate looked down at the unbuttoned cuff of the shirt she was wearing.  “...this is…”_

_“Me.”  Osgood moved around the end of the couch and carefully sat down on the edge of the coffee table, directly in front of her girlfriend.  “And I haven’t changed since dinner.”  She followed Kate’s gaze downwards, wondering what was holding her attention, only to see the brightly coloured stripes on her pyjamas, her very new pyjamas.  “The pyjamas are new.”_

_“They are very bright,” agreed Kate, only to backtrack in mortification.  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”_

_“You’re right.”  Osgood reached forwards and caught hold of Kate’s fingers, relieved when her cautious squeeze was answered by Kate with a squeeze of her own.  “They are new…”  She’d bought them a couple of months ago but only worn them for the first time now.  “...my others had gone from comfortably worn in to worn out.”  If she was honest with herself, they’d actually become worn out a while ago, but it was only the thought of Kate seeing them that had prompted her to cut the tags out of the new ones.  “But I meant that I hadn’t been wearing them during dinner.”  She felt Kate’s hand relax and shift in hers so their fingers were more comfortably threaded together.  “Unlike that shirt…” she teased, nudging her girlfriend’s bare knee with her own brightly coloured pyjama one.  “And I don’t mind,” she added quickly, knowing Kate wasn’t yet believing her enough to not immediately ask if she minded whenever Os noticed Kate was wearing her shirts._

_“It wasn’t nearer…”  Catching her lip between her teeth, Kate was peering up at Osgood, like she was expecting a negative reaction._

_“I’m glad it could help.”  Osgood hadn’t asked too many questions about what had or hadn’t happened in Kate’s previous relationships, but it was clear that Kate hadn’t always been considered an equal by her partner.  As far as Osgood was concerned, Kate was always her equal, and always able to do whatever she wanted to do, which right now seemed to be sit up, wide awake, wearing Osgood’s shirt, having a think about something.  “How’s the thinking going?”_

_“Not great.”_

_“Ah.”  Osgood studied Kate’s face, committing it to memory in case she didn’t get to see this side of her girlfriend again for a while.  “What’s the topic?”_

_“Gastropods.”_

_“Gastropods?”  Osgood wasn’t sure what she wouldn’t have been surprised by, but that certainly was not what she was expecting.  “Snails?”_

_“And slugs,” agreed Kate, nodding slightly but her nervousness was still obvious.  “For work.”_

_“All gastropods?”  Osgood wasn’t sure she knew all that much about them, other than some obvious points like slugs not having shells, but that sounded a bit too broad and general for a biologist like her girlfriend.  “And are they alive or…”  Presented with needing to describe an alternative state, with the obvious one being ‘dead’, Osgood wasn’t actually sure what her question was leading to._

_“All gastropods, and all states from alive through to cooked and preserved.”_

_“That’s…”  Osgood wasn’t surprised Kate was finding sleep illusive if she was having to think about every possible gastropod in a multitude of physical states, especially given the unspoken understanding that she was actually thinking about ‘all gastropods, alien and planet native’.  “...a lot of variables to consider.”_

_“Too many,” agreed Kate, starting to relax back into the couch seat, although she kept hold of Osgood’s hand.  “So I decided to think about fungi separately, and later.”_

_“Good idea.”  Osgood knew biology was her weak point scientifically, but she was fairly certain that whatever was lumping together gastropods and fungi was an administrative assumption rather than a scientific one.  “Why?”_

_“Separating fungi?”_

_“No, thinking about gastropods.”  Osgood rubbed her nose, discouraging it from thinking now was the time to sneeze.  “Although I might have started with fungi, but you’re the biologist…”_

_It took Kate a moment to work out what was prompting Osgood’s conclusion, with her unable to contain the burst of spontaneous laughter when she worked it out, already familiar with how easily Os picked up scientific knowledge about disciplines other than her own and interwove it into her general conversation_

_“Can you imagine Win Bambera’s face if I went in on Monday and said I’ve decided Whittaker’s Five Kingdom classification is the primary cross-reference and sort term rather than alphabetical?”  Although, even as she said it, Kate was starting to ‘see’ that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to incorporate it into the records - it wasn’t always easy to work out if an alien species mention was referring to an animal, plant or fungus._

_“She’d be fine,” declared Osgood confidently, having decided she quite liked the General when she’d met her a couple of months earlier.  “Until you told her how much the new computer systems would cost.”_

_“True…”  Kate moved her feet down from the couch, creating room for Osgood to move from perching on the coffee table to sitting on the couch as well.  “...you still struggling with that at work?”  The saga of the new computer system was an internationally understood phenomenon, affecting UNIT and UK Civil Service alike._

_“Yes…”  Osgood sat down on the couch and immediately picked up Kate’s legs and pulled them into her lap so that her girlfriend was sitting back how she had been when Os came through.  “...but you’ve got me thinking about gastropods now.”  Osgood’s frown suggested she wasn’t entirely enjoying the experience.  “Or rather, thinking about why you’re thinking about gastropods.”_

_“Oh, sorry…”  Kate ran her fingers through her hair and tried to order her thoughts a bit, understanding that Osgood was actually wanting to help if she could, but that she needed more information to try.  “...I’m supposed to be thinking about implementing tax rules, but we’ve got a jaffa cake problem.”_

_“Ah.”  Despite its crypticness, Osgood understood exactly what Kate meant by that._

_Following the court’s decision some years earlier on the long running ‘is a Jaffa Cake a biscuit or a cake’, one of Osgood’s PhD supervisors had insisted that the lab biscuit tin could not ever contain a Jaffa Cake, since it was now considered to be a cake not a biscuit.  Kate meanwhile, had briefly worked with someone who would only buy Jaffa Cakes for the biscuit tin, precisely because of the same court judgment.  She’d never worked out if it was out of perversity or economy._

_“When is a snail a slug?”  Osgood wasn’t actually all that informed about gastropods and wasn’t certain she knew what the proper distinction was between the two groups of animals._

_“Actually that’s not too difficult - that’s a question of shell, and all but a tiny minority have visually detectable shells.”_

_“Really?”  Osgood was almost disappointed in how simple it was._

_“Really.  They are all Phylum Mollusca.  Slug and snail are the common names.”_

_“Makes sense.”  Osgood saw Kate shiver and automatically pulled the blanket off the back of the couch and covered her girlfriend’s bare legs with it, not realising that the actual cause of Kate’s shiver was Osgood’s fingers, which had started tracing patterns on her girlfriend’s ankles and shins._

_“Thanks.”  Despite not thinking she’d been cold, now it was covering her, Kate appreciated the blanket’s warmth, and that Os was going to keep going with her squiggly patterns.  “Example scenario: two molluscs, side by side,  visually similar to each other…”  Kate held both hands up in front of her face, each one representing a mollusc.  “One’s highly toxic to everything on Earth but is recognised as a culinary delicacy in several alien cultures and as such can be ordered by resident aliens, but it’s subject to import controls and taxes.  So there’s lots of smuggling.”_

_“Okay…”  Osgood repositioned her glasses so they were more comfortable again and waited for Kate to explain what the second example mollusc was, no longer thinking about the general characteristics of snails and slugs._

_“The other one is non-toxic and a member of a recognised sentient species under the Intergalactic laws, but we have no common communication method.”  It was a huge relief that Osgood, through her father’s work for UNIT, was sufficiently ‘in the know’ about UNIT that Kate was able to make reference to the fact that Earth and humanity were not as alone in the Universe as the majority of the population thought.  “And must have their travel visa inspected but isn’t subject to import controls or tax.”_

_“Or be eaten?”_

_“Or be eaten,” agreed Kate, appreciating her girlfriend’s dry wit that was so often overlooked by others.  “Either way, it’s a diplomatic disaster waiting to happen unless we get better at customs inspections...” which explained why Kate had the problem to deal with, as her new job in Geneva was all about trying to improve UNIT’s general ability to apply and respect Galactic Law on Earth’s behalf.  “...but there’s a lot of variables.”_

_“You said they were visually similar?  The two molluscs?”_

_“In that example, yes.”_

_“But not identical?”_

_“No.  Know what to look for, and it’s obvious.”_

_“Do they?  Know what to look for?”_

_“Who?”_

_“Whoever does the customs inspections?”_

_“I’m not sure…”  Kate chewed on her lip as she gave her girlfriend’s question serious thought.  “...I don’t think they do…”  She pictured the processes and procedures she’d had explained to her over the last two days.  “No, they don’t.  They just have lists of names and high level to the point of being meaningless descriptions for the various species, but are basically trusting the paperwork and what they’re told.  They spend their time worrying about the tax rules.” And that, realised Kate, was where the problem began.  “But they need to be able to identify the mollusc for themselves, if only to avoid exposure to toxins…”_

_“Mmm…”  Neither agreeing or disagreeing with her girlfriend, Osgood crossed her legs at her ankles and gently eased Kate’s legs into a slightly more comfortable position on her lap and carried on listening to her private lecture on alien mollusc identification..._


	4. Chapter 4

“...she’s very…” Osgood did absently notice that she was not usually this open with work colleagues about her relationship with Kate, but Fran was privy to so much of their life anyway that Osgood decided not telling her the real reason for her surprise gastropod knowledge was more disrespectful to Fran than trying to brush it off.  Plus, she was, unusually for Os, in a nostalgic mood, and had been for most of the day.  “...lovable when she’s ‘sciencing’.”  Osgood was amused by the rapid change to Fran’s expression, not sure if it was the admission of finding Kate ‘loveable’ or her use of ‘sciencing’.  “It’s what the boys used to call it when she went into ‘lecture’ mode with them.  With a groan or two.”  Osgood repositioned her glasses on her nose, the added something she realised Fran might not have understood.  “They were teenagers then, before they took their GCSEs.”

 

“Oh.”  Of everything that Osgood had just shared, that was the bit that seemed to stun Fran the most.

 

“You didn’t know.”  Osgood sat down on the arm of one of the armchairs in the ‘waiting room’ part of Kate’s outer office and continued to develop her new theory, not waiting for Fran to confirm it.  “About us, then….which means before….”  Chewing on her lip as she considered all the knock on effects caused by this discovery, she had to smile.  “Of course you didn’t.”  She looked up at Fran, the smile brightening as she worked out the reason for Fran’s accidental exclusion from this aspect of Kate’s ‘history’.  “When you arrived, she was here and didn’t mention being there...and I wasn’t here.”  

 

Nodding sharply now the puzzle was complete, she glanced at the clocks on the wall.  Knowing that her various scientific problems and on-going experiments were, unusually,  not holding her attention today, Osgood decided to try and explain things a little more sensibly to Fran, especially now she understood how little Kate’s PA knew still.  “Sorry, I didn’t realise how little we’d actually explained...about us, and, well…”  Osgood looked meaningfully at the folders of archivable meeting papers on Fran’s desk and shrugged a little bit, as if to encompass the whole space.  “...UNIT.  Except by ‘we’ I mean ‘Kate’ because...”  Osgood resettled her glasses and looked at a point somewhere between her and Fran that was only ever now ‘seen’ by Osgood and, from her own perspective, Kate.  “...I was...away.”

 

“It’s fine.”  Fran still didn’t know what exactly was the reason for Osgood being ‘away’ when she’d joined UNIT, but she’d learned a long time ago that there were advantages to not knowing ‘everything’ all of the time.  As much as the ‘old romantic’ in her might be curious to know more about the life Kate and Osgood had away from UNIT, her professional side knew that she slept best when she only knew what the ‘Greyhounds’ felt she needed to know.  And so far, that hadn’t included Osgood’s absence at the time when Fran had joined UNIT, or anything about their life prior to Kate’s arrival at the Tower other than the existence of Gordy and Max.  “It’s not…”  Fran was going to say ‘it’s not something you need to share’, but Osgood interrupted her with a very different viewpoint.

 

“...not fair on you.”  Osgood was resolute, so resolute she actually interrupted Fran.  “Not with all the Geneva work.”  Kate had always been a frequent visitor to Geneva since she came to run the Tower, which hadn’t been unanticipated since it was also the first time in UNIT’s history that the Chief Scientific Officer hadn’t been permanently stationed in Geneva.  But in recent months, both Kate and, to a lesser degree, Osgood had started going to Geneva far more frequently.  “Most of which doesn’t have much to do with the Tower....or being CSO.”  

 

“It doesn’t?”  Fran’s attention was caught by another message appearing on her computer screen, this time from the UNIT equivalent of a Twitter style chat room.  “According to the grapevine, she’s taken over the snail tax lecture.”  Glancing at Osgood to see whether she was surprised by this piece of news, Fran clicked on the message alert, reading how everyone who had the appropriate access was now trying to get into the Hamilton Committee Room to listen to Kate’s impromptu lecture that the grapevine was clearly hoping would turn into a Question and Answer session.  “She’s…”  Fran read the latest thread forming on the UNIT internal messaging network a second time, not believing what she’d read the first time so taking a bit more care on her mental translation of the mixed French, German and English comments. “...not ‘Greyhound One’…” realised Fran, feeling silly when she said that, as it wasn’t quite what she meant.  

 

One of the first things that struck Fran when she’d started to work for Kate Stewart was what she’d come to think of as ‘the Greyhound One effect’.  Indescribable and inimitable, it was the ‘something’ that Kate carried with her through crises and calm.  None of these people posting messages about her sudden appearance on the stage of the largest lecture theatre UNIT had were mentioning Greyhound One, many probably didn’t know what ‘Greyhound One’ meant.  Only a few were mentioning her being the CSO.  All however, were leaping on the report of Kate Stewart suddenly appearing in the middle of a lecture on how to tax snails and mushrooms in a way that Fran wasn’t used to seeing happen - the messages were making it sound more like a famous music group had just started a surprise concert than a tax lecture. 

 

“I mean, this…” she gestured to the screen which was rapidly filling with comments from across the UNIT scientific community across the world as word of Kate Stewart’s impromptu lecture appearance spread.  “...isn’t because she’s Greyhound One.”  

 

“No, it’s not,” agreed Osgood, following the same email thread on her phone that Fran was looking at, knowing Kate would be embarrassed by what she would say was hyperbole, but Os thought was entirely justified, though she’d prefer it if fewer of her colleagues had crushes on her girlfriend.  (Unbeknownst to Osgood, Kate had similar thoughts every time word got round UNIT that Osgood had been persuaded to give a talk…) “And it’s not really about her being the Chief Scientific Officer either…”  Osgood put her phone back in her pocket, deciding she’d prefer to read the rest of the comments, if at all, with Kate.

 

“It isn’t?”  Fran had thought she was starting to understand that her underlying surprise and confusion was due to her not really appreciating what exactly her boss’ ‘other job’ as Chief Scientific Officer really involved.  From Fran’s perspective, it generally meant ensuring Kate went to Geneva for a few extra meetings, mostly with Boards and Committees throughout the year, which was far removed from putting on a lab coat or giving a lecture.  “But isn’t that why she’s still there?”  Fran didn’t know Central Command very well, but imagined it should be harder for the average employee to take over a lecture than Kate was apparently demonstrating, which surely meant it was because of her current job titles? 

 

“Oh, I see!”  Osgood took her glasses off and polished them again with her scarf, her movements automatic as she worked out how to unconfuse Fran.  “I suppose you could say that because she’s CSO she’s not been kicked out of the lecture by the audience…”  Osgood saw Fran’s grin was rather wry when she put her glasses back on, suggesting she was struggling to picture such an event.  “...and that and being Greyhound One probably explains why no one’s asked Security to remove her either…”

 

“Or if they have asked, Security didn’t listen….” suggested Fran, sufficiently aware of current Central Command tensions to know that while what Osgood said was the sensible presumption, there were a few people at Central Command who might have still tried to get Security to tackle Kate Stewart.

 

Osgood didn’t disagree with Fran’s opinion, but she decided it was better to treat it as a rhetorical comment.  Therefore, having checked her scarf ends were once again level, Osgood returned to what had originally started them off on this whole conversational tangent.  “The regulations, about Intergalactic Duty Arrangements for Gastropods and Fungi?  She wrote a lot of the implementation guidance and procedures, when she was in Geneva, before she was CSO.  There should be a copy...”  

 

Chewing on her lip as she tried to remember where it was located within the broader UNIT regulations, Osgood wandered into Kate’s empty office where there were copies of many of the regulations that UNIT had to follow, including all of the ones that were mandatory under the Galactic Laws.  Few at UNIT would recognise them however, as for the majority of UNIT,  when ‘regulations’ were mentioned, they actually thought of the implementation policies and procedures and not the underlying regulations.

 

“Why?” asked Fran, following Osgood into Kate’s office, fascinated, although she had the presence of mind to grab her computer tablet from the charging dock so she could continue to keep track of Kate’s Geneva trip and anything else that might decide Friday lunchtime was the right time to happen.

 

“Why should there be a copy on the shelf?”  Osgood was already standing in front of the shelves, studying the volumes as she hunted for the correct one.  “Or why did Kate write a lot of the guidance?”

 

“Both?”  Hovering in the middle of Kate’s office, Fran realised that she had never actually appreciated quite how many volumes of regulations were shelved in the corner of the office, with her attention invariably being taken by either her boss (when she was ‘at home’) or the Crown Jewels, which filled the display cabinets on three of the office’s walls.  

 

It had been something of a shock to discover that the ones on display ‘upstairs’ at the Tower’s Exhibition were in fact highly sophisticated (alien technology) holograms, with the safekeeping of the Crown Jewels entrusted to the ‘Sovereign’s Chancellor’ centuries before.  Now it was just one of a long list of ‘odds and sods’ of responsibilities Fran knew ‘Greyhound One’ had collected over the centuries, including it seemed, being an expert on alien slugs subject to tax.  

 

“Sorry, I shouldn’t be asking all these questions…”  Fran felt like she was pestering Osgood, but every time she understood a little bit more, Fran found she had another long list of more questions.

 

“It’s fine,”  Osgood smiled at Fran, genuinely meaning it.  “I’d assumed Kate had explained it to you when you started…but I’ve time to catch you up now if you want?”  She had time before she had to leave for her flight, and was honest enough with herself to know she’d lost interest in her lab work for the day now, not that any of it was world ending urgent.   “...and knowing this place, you’re going to need to know it all by Monday…”  That was the odd thing about UNIT - something could not be relevant or even thought about for decades and then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere it was at the forefront of everything and preoccupying everyone’s time for a few days or weeks.  It was those sorts of coincidences that made some of the more superstitious members of UNIT believe in the universe being rather more sentient than any evidence indicated. 

 

“If you’re sure?”  Fran didn’t remotely believe that Osgood did have the time, knowing that the Senior Scientist’s work backlog was usually tied with Kate’s for being the biggest at the Tower, but she also knew that Osgood was probably the best person she could hope to get as a teacher for all things pertaining to  UNIT or Kate, so wasn’t about to decline the opportunity she was being offered.  

 

“Absolutely.  Now, first question - how much do you know about the Shadow Proclamation and Article 57?”


	5. Chapter 5

_ One day in April, 2004 _

 

_ “The Outer Space Police?” Kate returned her tea cup to the low table in front of her and gave General Bambera her undivided attention: trying to keep a tea cup steady felt too much of a distraction. _

 

_ “You’ve been speaking to your father…” observed Win, following Kate’s lead and setting aside her own teacup, only putting up with the tea because she liked the scones - they were one of the few things she genuinely missed about England when she was in Geneva. _

 

_ “Hard not to when I’m living in his spare room…”  The sarcastic counter was already out of her mouth before she’d thought about it, causing her to blush and drop her head, her blonde hair falling forwards and hiding her face from one of her father’s oldest friends.  “...sorry, that was…” _

 

_ “The truth.”  Unperturbed, Win leaned forward and put her hand gently on Kate’s knee, trying to reassure her old friend’s daughter.  “I’m the one who needs to apologise, I didn’t think…” _

 

_ “Yes you did,” corrected Kate, sitting back in the comfortable but slightly too low armchair that the Savoy favoured for serving afternoon tea at and willing herself to relax a little.  “You just didn’t think I’d be so literal.”  She studied the toes of her shoes, bright yellow stiletto heels and her one concession so far to her ‘not the ‘Establishment’ status that she was still just about hanging onto.  “But you’re right….”  Composure regained, Kate looked back up at the non-judgemental face of her father’s old friend, and a woman she was starting to realise she was thinking of as a friend as well.  “...Dad and I are talking.  Alien threats are actually less stressful than, well….” _

 

_ “The male ego?” _

 

_ “Yes.”  Kate smiled wryly, recalling her father’s immediate offer when she and Gordy had appeared on his doorstep three weekends earlier, Kate having decided that her husband’s behaviour was not temporary and was sufficient for her to decide there were no reasons to warrant remaining in the ‘family’ home.  “I don’t think the Scottish Office would put up much resistance if Dad mounted an invasion….”  He’d been very sweet really, immediately offering to ‘educate’ her on-the-way-to-being-ex husband, which she’d taken to mean him explaining to Thomas why he wasn’t allowed to know what exactly Kate was the Home Office Liaison for, and make sure he understood that continued speculation in the vein he was currently favouring was probably not conducive to a long career in Whitehall.  “...but I’d prefer to not have Dad prove it.” _

 

_ “So UNIT’s suddenly become a safe topic of conversation?” _

 

_ “Yes, especially since Gordy’s showing quite the wrong sort of aptitude for cricket…”  Kate laughed at Win’s completely baffled expression.  “Gordy’s taken to wicket-keeping - I suspect being able to wear a helmet, gloves and shin pads all the time was the original attraction.” _

 

_ “That and not having to run from one boundary to another constantly?” guessed Win, remembering her brother complaining of such a ‘punishment’ when he’d played cricket in their youth. _

 

_ “Probably.”  Gordy was not a natural runner, but was otherwise remarkably athletic, when it suited him to be.  “He’s in the first team…” _

 

_ “And your father’s….?”  Win couldn’t quite work out what the Brigadier would find difficult about his grandson playing cricket, and fairly well by all accounts at that.  “Not a tennis fan surely?”  She was struggling to think of an alternative ‘summer’ sport that Gordy was perhaps avoiding by playing cricket, but couldn’t see her old friend favouring an individual sport over a team game. _

 

_ “Proud, but disappointed Gordy’s not a bowler.  I think Dad secretly hoped to be out in the garden practicing his Bradman impression by way of ‘helping’.” _

 

_ “Oh dear.”  Win was smiling at the image Kate was painting.  “What’s your contribution?  Leg spin?” _

 

_ “Hardly!  Groundsman mostly.  Dad’s lawn was overrun with moss.”  It had been quite therapeutic in its way, providing an immediate opportunity for Kate to be ‘useful’ for her father and son, without starting on something either felt obliged to try and help with, as neither were remotely horticulturally skilled.  “And trying to persuade them that the potentilla might be a less painful stumps substitute than the mahonia.”  She laughed at Win’s baffled expression, having forgotten that the General was not remotely horticulturally inclined, and considered Switzerland’s snowy winters as an excellent reason to avoid having an interest in the garden.  “Both are tough little shrubs, but the mahonia’s leaves are big and spiky.  By comparison, the potentilla is just a bit twiggy.”  Kate realised quite how far they’d strayed from Win’s original question and knew that the General probably didn’t really organise this catch up to discuss her father’s back garden.  “UNIT’s a less stressful conversation topic after all that.” _

 

_ “I can imagine…”  Actually, Win wasn’t sure she could, specifically, but had experienced complicated family dynamics via Flo’s family over the years.  “Did he just call them the Outer Space Police?  Or expand at all?” _

 

_ “We didn’t talk about them…”  Kate tried to recall how they’d even come up in conversation with her father in the first place.  “...he’d actually been telling me about…”  Kate decided, despite Win’s long-standing friendship with her father, that she’d perhaps best not mention exactly which story her father had been telling in case it wasn’t one Kate was officially needing to know.  “...something else and mentioned Level 5 civilisations.  I asked who determined promotion, and was that to 4 or 6.” _

 

_ “The Shadow Proclamation, and it would be to 6…”  Win’s smile was just a little too knowing, suggesting to Kate that not only had she been right to not specify what her father had been recounting, but that Win had spotted her sidestep.  “...though it’s hard enough to remain at 5.” _

 

_ “Are they coming to visit?”  Kate was unable to think of another reason why Win was suddenly bringing them up now. _

 

_ “No.”  Win adjusted one of the buttons on her uniform jacket so that the detailed decoration was the correct way up.  “We might get a spot check if rumours started, but according to the last inspection, we’re next scheduled for review sometime in the 24th century.”  Win looked at Kate, impressed with her lack of reaction to the timeframe.  “Though I’m always keen to know if any Judoon appear for any reason other than shift change at Trap Street.” _

 

_ “Judoon…”  Kate recognised the alien race Win mentioned, but wasn’t immediately able to picture them which she then realised was rather ironic given their presence in London was concealed by a misdirection circuit.  “...oh, the race the Shadow Proclamation use as police.  Have any appeared lately?”  Kate wasn’t sure if she wanted to meet Judoon or visit Trap Street, but clearly Her Majesty’s Prison Inspectorate did given how many meetings she was already taking with them to explain why this wasn’t going to happen. _

 

_ “No, which is fortunate.”  Win leaned forward, a movement Kate copied so that their already quiet conversation could continue even more quietly.  “As we’re not confident we’d pass an inspection and we’re rather reliant on Article 57.” _

 

_ “What’s Article 57?”  Her father had told her that one of the greatest skills a UNIT operative could have was to be fascinated by a situation that others were terrified by, something she’d struggled to understand at first but was starting to realise was exactly what she was.  This was fascinating, although judging from Win’s expression, it was clearly something that was also alarming. _

 

_ “Protection from destruction as long as the planet is legally compliant and Level 5.” _

 

_ “Useful.”  Kate hadn’t yet come across any mention of aliens whose specific ambition was to destroy the planet in its entirety, but she was happy to accept that the threat was real.  “I’m guessing the problem is compliance?”  It wasn’t that much of a guess, not when she’d spent the last four months trying, amongst other things, to get the Home Office to understand that just because someone in custody somewhere wasn’t human, didn’t mean that they didn’t have an equivalent of set of rights that needed to be respected, nor that incarceration in a ‘human’ prison automatically delivered those rights. _

 

_ “What gave you that impression?” asked Win with more than a hint of sarcasm as she leaned back in her chair, once more holding her cup of tea. _

 

_ “The four hours I spent this morning trying to get someone to understand that humanoid aliens who resist a strip search are not necessarily up to criminal activity, just perhaps reluctant to display their gills or whatever other anatomy they have otherwise concealed in order to ‘blend in’.”  Kate watched until Win had safely swallowed her mouthful of tea before adding.  “I have to go back tomorrow and explain why cavity searches are a really bad idea if you don’t know from an independent verified source exactly how many cavities the alien in question is supposed to have.”  Or what you’re supposed to find inside of one, but Kate didn’t think Win would be interested in the comparative acidities of alien salivas and quite how many of them produced enzymes that happened to be remarkably effective at breaking down human flesh and merely considered a latex glove to be added texture. _

 

_ “You’re enjoying your work, aren’t you?” _

 

_ “Actually, yes...”  Kate took a sip of her own tea, wincing when she found out it was stone cold.  “...but that’s not why we’re having tea together, is it?” _


	6. Chapter 6

“How worried do I need to be about losing Level 5 and the planet then being destroyed?” asked Fran cautiously, honest enough with herself to admit that if she’d been learning about this from anyone other than Osgood or Dr Stewart she would probably not have asked the question in the middle of a conversation about the UNIT regulations.  Then again, she wasn’t sure she’d find herself talking about Intergalactic law with anyone other than those two.

 

“Statistically speaking, humanity is more likely to be destroyed before before the planet is, so it’s quite hard to actually quantify the likelihood of absolute planet destruction.”

 

Osgood could think of three alien species they had had documented contact with in the last 12 months who had the necessary technological skill to destroy the planet but fortunately, not the intent.  They’d been less lucky with another two ‘contacts’,  which the Archives were recording as actually starting in their attempts to destroy the planet.  In fact, on both occasions, the Earth had only survived thanks to the timely intervention of the Doctor in one regeneration or another to stop it from happening by reminding the aggressor of Article 57.  In both instances, the aggressor was still part way through their rather lengthy declarations of destruction so they’d had time to contact the Doctor and get vital help in defusing the situation.  There were another 22 recorded interactions with alien species who didn’t mind the planet continuing to exist but had a strong preference for humanity’s annihilation, but that wasn’t protected by Article 57.  

 

It didn’t occur to Osgood that for Fran, ‘planetary destruction’ was an all encompassing term that included pretty much anything that saw life on Planet Earth interrupted, rather than a specific question about the planet Earth ceasing to exist, but then, unlike Osgood, Fran didn’t yet know that Galactic Law was quite pedantic in that whole area.  Preservation of humanity was a far lower priority than maintaining the Universe’s gravitational equilibrium, and as a result, hadn’t been  got to until Article 2100ish.  And even then it was something of a legal stretch according to the lawyers, with a stronger defence apparently found through the ‘illegal to reap’ conventions… Osgood told herself off from wandering from the main point.  “But it’s mostly irrelevant since we’re very unlikely to stop being Level 5 again anytime soon.”  

 

Almost statistically improbable in fact, but Osgood’s calculations could obviously only include the scenarios that were known to them, which created an error margin larger than Osgood cared for, so she compromised with ‘very unlikely’.  Which reminded her, she was going to ask the Doctor for a second opinion on her calculations the next time the Tardis was available to help with the risk analysis.

 

“And that’s important?”  Fran thought her question sounded stupid as soon as she’d asked it, but given Osgood’s nod, it wasn’t such a bad question as she feared.

 

“Very.  Level 4 is considered to be sociologically unstable making self-destruction inevitable so Article 57 is apparently suspended under Galactic Law.”  Osgood repositioned her glasses and glanced at the clock, seeing she still had plenty of time before she had to leave for her flight.  “And Level 6 is effectively unobtainable as long as there is a hole in the ozone layer, and even then unlikely enough to be considered statistically improbable.”  Article 57 apparently became quite complicated for planets classified between 6 and 17, but Osgood was aware of her limitations when it came to ecology and so hadn’t made it a priority to research yet.  She was fairly certain that, if it became something sufficiently probable to no longer be improbable, she’d be able to persuade Kate to explain the bits she hadn’t understood that applied to their particular planetary ecology.

 

“Good…”  Fran’s relief was short-lived however when she remembered what Osgood had said earlier.  “Wait, you said we’re unlikely to stop being Level 5 again anytime soon.  When were we not Level 5?”

 

“Most recently?  1957.  The launch of Sputnik established humanity’s Space Age which is an automatic Level 5 classification criteria.  Before that we were Level 2…”  Osgood frowned as she thought about what she had read of the events that had triggered the Level 2 classification, and decided that they were best not remembered just now.  Either way, it wasn’t humanity’s finest hour. “The establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency contributed to us reaching Level 4, which made it possible to be classified as a 5 when the Space Age started.”  

 

Apparently trying to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy wasn’t the same as preventing it from being legitimately weaponised, but it was enough to help the planet reach Level 4 which was an improvement on the ‘akin to the primordial soup’ classification that Level 2 was if the planet wasn’t supporting ‘water-breathing’ species.  Galactic Law could be really rather insulting if read in the wrong way.  Or any way.

 

“So we’re Level 5 now as long as we don’t do something really bad to ourselves?” summarised Fran, starting to feel less awkward about not knowing this - she could see why it wasn’t covered in the standard Induction if it was currently virtually impossible for Earth to become either a Level 6 or Level 4 planet.  And that would make the whole planetary destruction thing something to not worry about too, right?

 

“Yes.  But it’s not the Level 5 bit of Article 57 that’s important.”  Osgood adjusted her bowtie, which had drifted around so it was brushing her throat.  “It’s the not breaking any laws part.”

 

“I thought that meant the planet destroyer couldn’t break a law?”

 

“So did UNIT, before the last audit…”

 

* * *

 

 

_Another day in April, 2004_

 

_“Audit actions!”  Kate put her gin and tonic glass down on the table with a bit more force than she might have otherwise done, but it was an indication as to how she was feeling.  “What do I know about auditing?”_

__

_“Do you need to know anything about auditing?” asked Osgood logically, putting her own glass down on the cardboard coaster a little more gently and considering her friend._

 

_“Don’t I?” Kate tucked her long hair behind her ear and looked at the one person she felt able to talk to about Win Bambera’s unexpected offer from the day before._

 

_“If you’re working on ‘audit actions’, doesn’t that suggest someone else has done the audit already?”  Chewing on her lip, deep in thought, Osgood tried to think of a suitable scientific research analogy that might help Kate make a decision for the right reasons not the wrong ones.  “I mean, I’m enough of a chemist to complete the Winkler Test on water samples, but wouldn’t know where to begin to then identify what was wrong within the ecosystem and what needed managing or changing…”_

 

_“How do you know about the Winkler Test?” asked Kate, surprised that Osgood knew about it, as it really was very specific to the oxygenation levels in water and rarely used now unless an instrument needed calibrating.  “I thought only us dinosaurs knew about them now?”  Unbeknownst to Osgood, the relevance of the Winkler Test in the 21st century laboratory had been something of a sore point for Kate, who had remembered having to master the technique as an undergraduate, something her most recent set of students had found positivity antiquated and bordering on insulting when she’d set it for them as a compulsory lab._

 

_“A couple of years ago, the lab I shared still had Winkler bottles…”  Osgood blushed when she realised she’d said ‘still had’, knowing she’d accidentally touched a nerve based on Kate’s dinosaur reference.  “...I don’t mean...what I meant was…”  Osgood stopped looking at Kate and instead focussed on the discarded stirrers that had come with their drinks and were now stood in the empty tonic bottles.  “I shared the lab with three other physicists who, like me, sometimes wanted to do an experiment that needed a fume cupboard and other equipment more readily available in the Chemistry labs.  So we’d been put together in this lab that had been previously used by a biochemistry project.”  Composure regained, Osgood looked back up at Kate and guided her glasses back into a more comfortable position.  “There was a ‘know your newt’ poster left on one of the cupboard doors.  Inside another cupboard was all sorts of funnels and bottles we’d not come across before.  I borrowed a lab equipment catalogue to work out what they were.  Some were very useful...”_

 

_“Impressive.”  Kate nudged Osgood’s knee with her own under the table by way of unspoken apology for doubting her.  “Actually, I must email Freddie and ask her if she’s got any Winkler bottles still.”  The loss of her lab had actually hurt Kate more than the abrupt end of her research funding and sudden unemployment, but her best friend still had her lab and had adopted most of Kate’s equipment before the next academic was moved in to her lab.  “But that wasn’t your point.”_

 

_“No…”  For a moment, Osgood wasn’t entirely what her point was.  “Just because I can look up when and how to correctly perform a Winkler Test doesn’t mean I know how to plan to restore an ecosystem based on its results.”  She didn’t know for certain that her friend did, but it was something Osgood thought Kate could probably do, if she wanted to._

 

_“And the Winkler Test is analogous to the Audit?”  In deference to the alleged secrecy surrounding all things UNIT, Kate hadn’t explained to Osgood precisely what the action generating audit was relating to, although she did sometimes wonder how exactly UNIT maintained its secrecy given how openly the likes of their fathers and Win Bambera talked about it._

 

_“In my example, yes.”  Osgood took another sip from her gin and tonic, blinking rapidly._

 

_“You’ve just found the gin too…”  Kate took a supportive sip of her own drink.  “I promise I stirred them, but clearly it wasn’t particularly effective.”_

 

_“And at least a double,” diagnosed Osgood, looking at the levels of the remaining liquid in their glasses.  “But it’s very nice,” she added quickly, not wishing to appear unappreciative when she was quite happy with a strong drink, now she knew it was strong.  Her day at work hadn’t been quite as unexpected as Kate’s sudden job offer, but the continued saga of the computer system upgrade was beginning to take its toll on everyone and everything.  “You don’t have to know how to audit, just be able to understand and interpret the conclusions so you can improve things.”  Osgood took another sip of her drink, this time prepared for the intense gin hit and liking it.  “Which means you need to understand the thing being audited of course...what was audited?”_

 

_“Things I apparently understand…” observed Kate dryly, knowing Osgood wasn’t offended that she wasn’t being more specific.  “More of the same sort of stuff I’ve been looking at with the Home Office mostly, except I’d be deciding where to stick my nose in for myself.”_

 

_“Is that a diplomatic way of saying there’s a lot of things requiring improvement?” Osgood took another sip of her almost entirely neat gin while she waited for Kate’s answer._

 

_“I see I’m not the only one learning Civil Service double-speak!”  Kate tucked a fallen strand of blonde hair out the way behind her ear.  “Did you work out what your ‘development opportunity’ really was?”_

 

_“A project no one else could make work….”  Osgood shrugged off Kate’s interest in her work, not considering it to be all that interesting.  “...I wasn’t sure why though , but then I found out where the computer system upgrade had got to.  Without the upgrade, there’s no point buying the test apparatus the project needed as it won’t work with the existing system”  The expressive face she pulled told Kate everything she needed to know about how that discovery had played out.  “But I’ve found a way to do it anyway.”_

 

_“How?”  Kate had learned early on in her time as the UNIT-Home Office liaison that few things moved more slowly than a computer system upgrade, with the delivery teams being virtually impossible to pin down on anything to do with deadlines and specifications, nevermind then agree to helpful modifications._

 

_“I’ve designed a new test apparatus that will work with our existing systems so we don’t have to wait for the upgrade.  My boss seemed pleased.”_

 

_“I bet he was…”  Kate, unlike Osgood, also had a better understanding about how small equipment budgets had become relative to the cost of new equipment.  So not only had Osgood managed to work out how a project could happen despite the lack of new computer systems, she’d also saved him from having to buy expensive new equipment.  “So are you still under deadline pressures?”  That had been the main theme of Osgood’s disgruntlement last time Kate had spoken to her about this, with Osgood frustrated that she was barely being given enough time to let the experimentation phase of the project complete given how delayed the project start was._

 

_“No.  Doing it this new way means I should have two extra weeks to do the write up.”  She didn’t think she’d need more than a few days, but wasn’t complaining.  “I just don’t understand why the others didn’t change their approach sooner…”_

 

_“Because you’re you Os…” teased Kate, nudging her friend’s knee with her own again, pleased when she saw the beginnings of a shy smile ghost across her face.  “...brilliant Os…” she added, nudging Osgood’s knee again._

 

_“Umm, yes, well….”  Osgood looked intently at the ice cube melting in her glass, not really sure on what to say to her friend.  “Thanks...your audit stuff sounds interesting.”  It felt clumsy and awkward, changing the subject like that, but this was supposed to be a chance for her to be an ear for Kate, not the other way around.  Without knowing the details, Osgood had been able to tell that not only was Kate rather good at whatever it was she’d been working on since she’d left the University during January, but she was clearly finding it enjoyable and stimulating in its own way.  “And you’re having fun.”  Which, thought Osgood, studying her friend’s cautious smile of agreement, wasn’t something Kate had had much opportunity to experience at times._

 

_“I am actually.”  Despite the horrors of the last couple of months, with her academic career and marriage falling apart in fairly short order, not to mention the indignity of having to move in with her father when she was going to be 40 next birthday…and, at the current rate of things with the divorce and the like, probably still be living with him for her 50th..._

 

_“What’s stopped you accepting the job already?” Osgood nearly laughed when she saw Kate’s expression.  “What?  I know you…”_

 

_“Geneva.”  Kate didn’t dispute Osgood’s conclusion - she was absolutely right, there was something about the job that had her excited, but what it was she had no idea - it was definitely a long way from university lecturer and researcher._

 

_“Working more closely with them?”  Osgood knew from conversations with her own father that ‘Geneva’ within UNIT usually meant Central Command who, while well-meaning as individuals, often became less than user-friendly when dealt with collectively.  “Winifred Bambera’s alright isn’t she?”_

 

_“Win’s lovely, and it means working IN Geneva.”_

 

_“Oh.”_

 

_“What?”  Kate was fairly certain Osgood was amused by something, but she wasn’t sure what it was._

 

_“At least you can move out from your Dad’s…”_

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

Fran’s eyes were wide as she looked at the shelves, starting to understand that from a UNIT perspective, the Crown Jewels were perhaps not the most extraordinary thing kept in Kate’s office.  “So these are the Intergalactic Laws? That we have to follow as a Level 5 planet in order to keep the Article 57 protection?”  She was rather hoping not, as she wasn’t sure she could forgive herself for failing to properly notice something as important sounding as the ‘Intergalactic Laws’, Crown Jewels or not.  Plus, if she was honest with herself, she might have been picturing that they’d be rather more ‘sci-fi’ than the leather bound volumes she was looking at.

 

“No.  These are just the regulations and references that UNIT must have and follow in our jurisdiction to ensure that the Intergalactic Laws. are complied with.”  Osgood took her glasses off and gave the right lens a thorough polish with the end of her scarf - the volumes of regulations hadn’t been dusted for a while.  “The Laws are in…”  She put her glasses back on.  “...one of the Archives.”  Osgood didn’t think Fran  _ couldn’t _ know where exactly they were, but that wasn’t necessarily the same thing as Fran being able to know exactly where they were within the Black Archive, nor that their particular location was determined based on the fire risk that every law update brought, so she chose her words carefully and moved on.  “Each Head must then have a set of all the current local sovereign regulations.  The Chief Scientific Officer also has the Scientific Regulations…”  Osgood looked at the bookcase, trying to remember which ones were which as most didn’t identify themselves on their spine.  “...they’re the ones that aren’t red or cream.”  

 

There were several shelves of fairly uniformly bound leather volumes in either red or cream leather that were the UK UNIT regulations, and written mostly in English.  The Scientific Regulations, which had travelled to London from Geneva with Kate when, already Chief Scientific Officer, she was appointed UK Head, were rather more haphazardly collated and in a mixture of English, French, German and a few other languages.  Some also dated back several centuries and were, if you weren’t too worried about nightmares, really quite beautifully illustrated in a rather grotesque way.

 

Fascinated, Fran studied the shelves, only now making the connection between the occasional reference to the ‘regulations’ in situations like the Banshee incident and the books on the shelves.   Even then, she’d not thought about where the Regulations came from, or who worried about whether they were correct or not… she knew she had so many questions she wanted to find out the answers to, but there was one question ahead of all the others.  “I still don’t understand what this has to do with the snails and mushrooms?”

 

“Volume 9 I think,” said Osgood, passing to Fran the cream leather bound volume she’d just removed from the shelves.  Although she didn’t know the regulations ‘by heart’ in quite the same way that her girlfriend often appeared to, Osgood could remember enough of what was in Volumes 1-8 that she was confident this particular diplomatic oddity was in the next volume, as it certainly wasn’t in volumes 10-14 either.   “Trade and Customs Duties.”   Obediently, Fran opened the book, relieved to see it had a contents page, then turned on to the actual regulation.

 

“It’s so short?”  Fran, based on what she’d learned so far, had been expecting to find something that was hundreds of pages long and written in the densest possible double-speak beloved of regulation writers.  But if she was reading the contents page correctly, and a quick flick to the right page confirmed she was, this regulation that had a 2 hour lecture dedicated to it in Geneva today, that Kate Stewart had gate-crashed…  “Five sentences?”  She would guess that the equivalent legislation for the UK would be at least five pages... 

 

“About that, yes.”  Osgood leaned forwards to see the page Fran held out, understanding what Fran’s confusion was being caused by as, unbeknownst to her, it was exactly the same confusion Osgood had experienced more than a decade before.  “A regulation can be complicated to interpret and apply without being long.”  She waited while Fran, after a quick flick through the rest of the volume, put the book back on the shelf.  “And it can be simple for one planet and species to understand and apply, but very complicated for another planet, or another local jurisdiction on the same planet.”

 

Fran could believe some sort of tax rule was complicated to apply - she’d spent most of her civil service career trying to avoid the Treasury, but was still struggling with how Kate fitted in, unless…  “I didn’t know Dr Stewart was a lawyer?”

 

“She’s a biologist.”  Kate was, in Osgood’s opinion, brilliant at anything to do with alien biology or anatomy, and that was having consciously adjusted her opinion to factor in her obvious emotional bias when it came to considering her girlfriend’s talents.  “

 

“Who became an expert on how to tax the alien mushrooms and snails?”

 

“And slugs, but not leeches.”  Osgood remembered making that mistake and receiving a very detailed explanation from Kate about why a leech was definitely not a gastropod.  It was one of the few scientific detours with Kate that Osgood had not remotely enjoyed, finding everything to do with leeches rather alarming. “And I think the tax is quite easy to work out, as all that really matters for the Intergalactic Duties is whether the gastropods and fungi are alive and or…”  Osgood struggled for the right word as ‘dead’, while technically correct, didn’t really carry the right meaning.  “...an edible delicacy.”  She checked the ends of her scarf were level, deciding as well that it would be better to get Kate to explain what happened if the protected species treaties and illegal smuggling and trade were introduced as variables.  “Ambassadors aren’t taxed, but cooking ingredients and aphrodisiacs are.”  The ends of the scarf were now level and safe from her or anyone else’s feet.  “And it’s against regulations and good manners to try and claim import duties on a Diplomat.”  She sneezed.  “Or consume them.”

 

“That’s…”  Fran was about to say that was impossible, but then she remembered the last time Representative Tronkrinkgrin had visited. There had been the mix-up with his hand luggage and in the hamper he had brought with him to the Tower, which was supposed to have the sequinned Fez he was leaving with them for the Doctor, they all saw his picnic for the journey back to Roqurting from wherever he had been before Earth.  “...why Tronkie fainted?”  Like everyone in UNIT who had ever met the current Senior Alien Ambassador, he insisted that they call him ‘Tronkie’ rather than attempt his full name.  As a result, it was one of the many ways he was considered to be one of UNIT’s ‘favourites’ amongst those who met the regular alien visitors.

 

“Yes.  He had a sort of mushroom pate with him, and some more dried whole mushrooms so he could have them flavour a dish at a dinner party he was hosting on Roqurting.  It was a good thing the pate was made using mushrooms that had been dried and then soaked.”  Osgood couldn’t remember what Kate had said they’d been soaked in, but it had sounded quite interesting as a concept, and something they’d thought they might try with the more conventional Earth equivalents some time.  

 

“Why?”  Fran wasn’t sure she could imagine a sentient mushroom, but then she was also struggling to picture a snail with diplomatic immunity.

 

“Dried they were an edible delicacy, but fresh…”  Osgood’s nose twitched as she tried to avoid another sneeze.

 

“High taxes?”

 

“Bioterrorism charges.  Not to mention we’d have been dead if it hadn’t been packed correctly.”  That had actually been what had distressed Tronkie so badly, rather than the risk of being charged under the Laws - he  _ liked  _ this planet and these humans, despite their odd little habits and ridiculously inefficient biology.

 

“Ouch.”


	8. Chapter 8

“...leaves us with a few minutes for a bit of fun, if I’m allowed?”  Kate looked  to Win Bambera and Charlie Bevois who had somehow managed to find two seats free in the front row within minutes of her taking over the lecture.  Seeing Win’s wink, which Kate took to confirm there wasn’t a crisis she was needed for, Kate looked at Charlie, another friend from her Geneva days and who was now the UNIT Chief Revenue and Tax Inspector.

 

“Mais oui!”  Charlie’s grin was reassuringly familiar, and told Kate all she needed to know about how things were or weren’t going for her old friend in his department.

 

“Tip top…”  Striding back to the table on the stage, Kate reached for her security pass as she deliberately placed her right hand flat on the glass square set in the wood, next to the in built touch-screen.  “...time for a pop quiz.”  As she spoke, the glass under her hand glowed green and, since her handprint was recognised by the scanner, a recessed security pass scanner and keyboard slide out from the side of the table.  Swiping her pass, Kate smiled when she saw a simplified version of her UNIT home screen appear, alongside the lecture room tablet system controls.  “...which will be fun for me…”  She looked up at the audience and saw the nervous shuffling and sideways glances they all shared.  “...and an opportunity for me to have a go with the new computer system, which could well be more fun for you than me…” she joked, before glancing back at the screen and pressing a short sequence of icons.  No doubt somewhere in the Computer department was having kittens as she’d not received her mandatory system training, but nothing was going to stop her having a go now.  

 

In fact, if she was honest with herself, it was the lure of the newly installed information system that had seen her within earshot of this lecture in the first place.  Based on an initial design idea by Os, but designed and build by Central Command’s Computing and Maintenance Teams, it had been receiving rave reviews from everyone, alien and UNIT, in the last couple of months or so.  Kate’s initial hope had been to be able to slip into the back of the lecture and experience the system from the audience’s perspective, which was based around each seat having a uniquely identifiable touch screen tablet that the on stage presenter could send handouts and the like to, but she wasn’t going to say no to this opportunity to try it out from the presenter’s seat.

 

“...now, assuming I’ve done that right, you should all have the current version of the Gastropod Identification Guide on your screens…”  She was loving the biometric login - it was easy to provide a hand scan will lecturing, with the combination of voice print and handprint releasing the pass scanner for final access.  “...and no access to the Intranet, which means no sneaky database searches.”  She smirked when she heard the groans coming from some of the audience when their attempt to bring up the UNIT database search confirmed that yes, she did have the ability to restrict the system access the tablets had.  “You too Inspector!” she teased, seeing Charlie hadn’t pulled his tablet around so he could see the screen.  

 

His play acted reluctant compliance, complete with pointed ‘I did it’ miming from General Bambera had those that could see their antics laughing, and bought Kate a few seconds to put her glasses back on and find what she was looking for, which was the pre-loaded tools for speakers.

 

“Excellent.”  Kate took off her glasses and looked back up at the audience.  “Now, in a minute, I’m going to give you a scenario and you’ll get 3 minutes to pick your answer from the options I give you.”  She sensed the disbelief coming from many of the audience.  “I’m being generous - the inspection KPI target for initial assessment is 150 seconds…”  Sometimes things had to be done quickly because the backlog created if too much time was taken became overwhelming, but sometimes the time pressure was for diplomatic reasons, and inspecting imports and exports was one of the most diplomatically sensitive areas of UNIT’s alien interaction.  Efficiency and the illusion of speed was therefore vital, hence the target times.  “And to make it interesting, I’ll buy lunch for anyone who gets a perfect answer.”  She looked at Charlie and Win, grinning.  “Including Chief Inspectors and Generals!”  

 

She caught Win’s accurately thrown hat (the General’s only convenient missile) with ease, having had rather more practice at catching Win’s missiles than most over the years and walked across the stage to hand it back to her friend, accepting the ‘no hard feelings’ handshake and hearing the whispered encouragement to keep enjoying herself.  

 

“So, question 1...” Kate returned to the lecturer’s table and looked back down at the screen. Putting her reading glasses back on, she typed in the short summary phrases that made up the question and multiple choice answers.  “...One Galactic Standard Weight of frozen whole Dropanturi, presented for inspection with paperwork.”  She paused for moment while her audience realised she hadn’t been joking and was in fact starting a quiz, as the multiple choice options were starting to appear on the main screen and their tablets.  “Do you A, stamp the paperwork, collect the duty and release the goods? B, inspect the specimens, stamp the paperwork, collect the duty and release?; C, inspect and seize ? or D, inspect and impose conditions and duties before release?”  

  
With the four options up on the main projection screen, and everyone with the official UNIT Gastropod Identification Guide in front of them, no one had any excuse to not attempt the question, nor should they have any issues with getting it correct… though the clock starting the 3 minute countdown did put them under some pressure.

 

And gave Kate the opportunity to write the next couple of questions….which wouldn’t be so 'easy'.

 

* * *

 

 

“So did you work with Dr Stewart in Geneva?  When she was working on the regulations implementations?” asked Fran as she followed Osgood back to the outer office.  They’d looked at a couple of other regulations that Fran remembered hearing being mentioned, Fran taking the opportunity to learn a bit more from Osgood while she had a chance.  Kate Stewart’s ability to remember the detail about the most random of UNIT alien minutiae was now making much more sense to Fran than it had done an hour or a month ago.  She also knew, from her own experience, how anyone working alongside Kate might find the enthusiasm contagious, which was what she thought must have happened to explain Osgood’s similar abilities. 

 

“For UNIT?”  Osgood took her glasses off and set about removing the fine coat of dust that had settled on the lenses when they’d been looking at the various volumes of Regulations.  “No.  I joined UNIT and the Tower just before Kate arrived here.”  The sequencing of who out of Os and Kate officially worked at the Tower first was buried under a messy tangle of HR admin, a couple of unsuccessful alien invasion attempts, Gordy’s chicken pox and an unfortunate incident involving the Senior Scientist for North America and the wrong end of a Psionic Mind Beam, but Osgood generally remembered it as she arrived on time and Kate was late. “October 2009.”

 

“Just after the Torchwood…”  Fran wasn’t sure whether it was acceptable to describe an entire base and long established semi-official-depending-who-you-asked department exploding and prompting quite a major UNIT reorganisation as ‘stuff’ or ‘thing’, but she was drawing a blank on what else to describe it as.

 

“Yes.”  Osgood put her glasses back on.  “But it was a coincidence for me.  I was already on my way to working here, from the National Physics Laboratory.”  She’d been going to take over from the then Senior Scientist with a long handover before their retirement the following Easter, but events overtook them.  So what actually happened was she got no handover and the MI5 ‘technology division’ transferred to her as a bonus, although Mr Dekker was very good at helping her integrate the alien monitoring that UNIT relied on before he then retired.  Which reminded her, she and Kate needed to send him a birthday card….”Sorry?”  She’d completely missed what Fran had said.  “I was thinking about something else…”

 

“When you came to work here, you already knew Dr Stewart?”  Fran hadn’t realised before today how little she actually knew about how either of them came to work for UNIT or be together, but Osgood’s earlier comments about paying attention to the lecturer had her assuming they’d already known each other….

 

“Yes.”  Osgood felt her cheeks pink as she caught her lip between her teeth and tried to answer without sounding too lovestruck.  “We’d met in 2003…”  She glanced at the clock, thinking Kate must be almost at the end of her impromptu lecture now.  “And by the time I started working here, we’d been together five years…almost to the day come to think of it.”  She picked up her stack of files that she’d not been able to give to Fran for archiving yet, preparing to take them back to her office.  “But in theory it was the first time we were together and in the same country.”

 

“Oh.”  Of everything that Osgood could have said, Fran had not been expecting that.  “October…”  She looked at the paper calendar stood on her desk, next to the telephone, and then looked at Osgood, suddenly thinking she understood why Kate had uncharacteristically not objected to the extra couple of meetings being squeezed in to the diary for this afternoon, or why Monday’s Senior Staff meeting was being held on Tuesday and in Geneva.  “This weekend?  Is your anniversary?”

 

“Yes…”  Osgood nodded her head and felt in her trouser pocket for her inhaler, knowing her ears were probably bright red.  “I’m on the 4.30 flight.”  

 

“Are you staying in Geneva?” Fran, like all of her equivalent PAs at Geneva, had the flight schedules between all of London’s airports and Geneva committed to memory, and ‘the 4.30 flight’ meant British Airways from London City Airport.  Fran however, unlike many of her equivalent PAs, didn’t work for someone who was incapable of making their own arrangements, so aside from ensuring that schedulable UNIT work didn’t intrude in Kate or Osgood’s diaries until Tuesday, she didn’t know what their weekend plans were.

 

“Yes…”    Osgood reached for her bowtie and checked it was tidily knotted and level while thinking through everything she knew about their weekend. “...no.”  Her ears were definitely bright red now.  “I don’t know, it’s a surprise.”

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

 

“Right, time to see how many lunches I’m buying.  Could you all please stand up?” asked Kate as the timer ran out on the final question she’d set.   She held up her reading glasses so she could look through them at the screen and quickly dragged the questions into the order she wanted to go through them in while everyone else got to their feet.  “Okay, starting with the last question…”  She found the zoom function on her screen, discovering she could actually resize the results so she could read them without her glasses.  “Could anyone who answered A or B sit down please, you’ve just destroyed humanity.”

 

About two thirds of the audience sat down in confused silence.

 

“You are absolutely correct to apply import duty.”  It was important thought Kate, to give credit was credit was due and they had at least applied the tax rules correctly if they’d picked either of those two options.  “As the Torodian toadstools have been ‘processed’ to make them into the pate.”  Kate found a working laser pointer in the pen holder on the desk and used it to highlight the word that everyone sitting down had overlooked.  “ _ Fresh _ Torodian toadstools are strictly forbidden without special permits and licenses on account of the spores they carry which, when exposed to nitrogen, multiply.  Inhale a Torodian toadstool spore and your respiratory system is paralysed within two hours.”  Kate wasn’t surprised that Tronkie had fainted when his luggage mix-up had been discovered - he would have been unaffected as Roqurting physiology was different to human physiology, but Earth would never have been the same again.   “Based on the current information, you don’t know if the pate is freshly made from dried toadstools or if ‘fresh’ means raw Torodian toadstools were used to make the pate.  And it could be either - I’m reliably informed that both are delicious, in a smoked toffee sort of way.”  Personally, she thought it sounded rather strange, and wasn’t able to get past the risk of respiratory system paralysis, but Tronkie had recommended some rather fine flavour combinations over the years she’d known him, so she wasn’t going to argue.

 

She clicked off the laser pointer and looked out to her audience.  

 

“Those of you that answered D can stay standing because you’ve not destroyed humanity, but you have failed to collect the right amount of duty.”  Kate thought she saw Charlie fidget and smiled, amused at the idea of the Chief Inspector getting the tax bit of the question wrong.  “You are, however, no longer eligible for a free lunch from me.”  Charlie’s crestfallen expression confirmed to Kate that he had got the tax bit wrong .

 

“Right, onto question three….I didn’t say you could stand up again…” she rebuked them mildly, hearing the huffs of displeasure from the few that had tried to stand up again.  “You’ve destroyed humanity, there’s no second chance...” Kate put her hands in her pockets and considered the audience thoughtfully.  “...and no, that wasn’t a joke.”

 

Waiting a moment longer, until the silence was almost at the point of being uncomfortable for some of the people sat down, Kate turned and walked back to the computer screen.  “So, question three…”  The question appeared on the big screen at the front of the lecture theatre to help everyone keep track of what question she was looking at next, since she was marking them backwards.  “...staying standing or sitting, raise your hand if you thought the answer was B, check the tank measurements and water sample before doing anything else?”  Kate saw about a third of the audience put their hands up, split roughly equally between those seated and standing.  “Congratulations, you got that right.  Anyone standing up who didn’t answer B, please sit down.  The planet is being destroyed in one week, give or take an hour or so.”

 

“How?”  

 

Kate had no idea who had asked the question, although it sounded more like a heckle, but gave it the courtesy of a proper answer.

 

“As the guidance explains, the Partagant Slug is a ‘supremely protected’ species under Galactic Law and can only be moved under the strictest of circumstances to ensure their survival and fertility.  Failure to satisfy ourselves that they are being transported in a manner consistent with their well-being constitutes a breach of the Partagant Protection Treaty.  That breach would be reported to the Shadow Proclamation and, since we’d broken one of the treaties, we’d lose our Article 57 protection with immediate effect.”  Kate thought for a moment about what she might know about the audience, before deciding she needed to play it safe.  “You’ll just have to trust me when I tell you there would be a disorderly queue to destroy Earth the moment we lose our Article 57 protection and whoever felt they were at the front of that queue wouldn’t hang around.”  She was rather glad she’d taken a few minutes to make sure the audience had understood what Article 57 meant, as judging by the noisy fidgeting, it hadn’t been something the official lecturer had felt important to mention.   “Any more questions?”  

 

Whoever the heckler was decided to shut up at that point.

 

“Right, next question…”  As before, Kate brought the question up on screen, deciding they must have worked out the ‘game’ now with the standing and sitting.  “Easy one now….hands up if you didn’t pick C?”

 

A few were hands cautiously raised, mostly from the people standing up this time.

 

“Bad luck, you’ve sterilised humanity and can sit down.”  It was a bit of an evil question if she was honest, one she saw did for Win Bambera, who was trying to inconspicuously sit down without Kate noticing.  “If you don’t believe me, read the guidance for the snails again, paying particular attention to what happens to them when they die, as that was the clue that C was the only possible correct answer.”  

 

The Rathgan snail secreted a mucus that was soluble in water and was currently impossible to remove from the water supply once it was present in it.  It appeared to have no adverse effect on water quality, but when ingested by mammals either directly or via plant matter, it started to radioactively degrade and somehow steralised them.  Its inability to be removed from the water supply meant the damage to the mammal species exposed to the contaminated water was irreversible and the planet had to be immediately quarantined so the water didn’t escape.  As a result, the transportation of live Rathgan snails through any water reporting planet’s jurisdiction was strictly forbidden.  Unfortunately, they were also considered by some species to be a delicacy if cooked properly, so there was a healthy smuggling market, but only of live snails…

 

“Remember, if you suspect Rathgan snail smuggling, the only acceptable course of action is immediate quarantine pending deep space destruction.  Any snail will be being smuggled alive, as once dead, decomposition is rapid and renders them toxic.”  It was also an excellent way of soothing ruffled alien diplomatic feathers in Kate’s experience, as any perceived rough or intrusive treatment on arrival could be blamed on rumours of Rathgan smuggling activity on the rise, and all objections immediately disappeared.  The Rathgan snail made the Far East’s enthusiasm for the highly toxic Pufferfish look positively risk averse.

 

Kate brought up the final question, which had been the first one she’d put up, and looked out at the audience, wondering if there was anyone left standing up.  “Right, final question.  Who picked D?”  Most of the audience put their hand up, which didn’t surprise Kate all that much, as it was during the introduction of the Droptanuri that she’d first interrupted the original lecture.  “Excellent.  Anyone still standing can sit down now.”  She put her glasses back on and tapped away at the main tablet screen for a few seconds, finding out what the recorded scores were.  “Well, it seems that out of the 198 who joined in with the fun, Earth as we know it ended for 191 of you.”  She looked out at the audience over the the top edge of her reading glasses, getting a general sense of uncomfortable squirming.  “Five of you have kept the Earth habitable, but failed to correctly apply the Intergalactic Duty Laws, and since we’re only permitted…”  Kate looked to Charlie for a hint, being completely unable to remember what the number was, only to see him holding up 7 of his fingers.  “...seven duty breaches in a standard Galactic quarter, we’d have a very nervous 71 days ahead of us.”

 

“Dr Stewart?”  Maria Walsh had taken one of the spare seats in the back row shortly after the news shot round Central Command that Kate Stewart was back in the lecture theatre.  Not having been working for UNIT when Kate had been a more regular lecturer at UNIT, the Colonel had slipped in to see what the fuss was about.

 

“Yes Colonel?”  Kate shielded her eyes from the bright stage lights as she looked up in the direction of Maria’s voice, not realising she’d been in the audience.  Kate had no way of knowing which seat Maria had taken, so didn’t know how Earth had fared for her in the quiz.

 

“What would happen if there was an 8th breach in that timeframe?”

 

“Good question.  Charlie?  Care to explain?”  Kate wondered what her friend was going to do, as she knew he could lecture on his specialist field for hours...or deliver a pithy one liner.  Her stomach hoped it was the one liner.

 

“Oui.”  Standing up, he smoothed down his jacket as he stepped up onto the stage.  “C’est BOOM!”

 

“Well, we lose the Article 57 protection first…” pointed out Kate amiably, not wanting anyone to get completely the wrong idea from his slight oversimplification.  “...which takes about an Earth week to process.”

 

There was a rather pregnant silence across the whole auditorium as this new perspective on the importance of not getting the imported goods inspections right sank in.

 

“The reality, Ladies and Gentlemen,” began Kate after another moment, when she’d judged the silence to have developed for long enough to have made the point,  “...is that you will never have an inspection under these circumstances.  Rather, you will have the full paperwork and shipping details, all manner of environmental and cultural clues from the shipment itself and the accountable alien to interview.  And with some apology to Monsieur Bevois for hijacking his department’s lecture programme…”  Kate nodded in thanks to him, only to have him wave her apology off, feeling that if apologies were owed, it was from him to her and the rest of UNIT.  “...I assure you, my objective was not to completely paralyse you with terror, despite what you might be feeling now.”  

 

Putting her hands in her trouser pockets, Kate walked round the table so she could lean on the edge of it, her lime green heels contrasting vividly with the dark blue of her suit and the carpet as she looked thoughtfully at the audience, genuinely as relaxed as she looked.  

 

“Working for UNIT means having the privilege to know what’s really out there, beyond the galaxies and stars that telescopes are only just discovering. To know what we know, to see what we see and to meet the aliens we meet, including the not so friendly ones, is a privilege.”  She cleared her throat, starting to wish she had a glass of water, but it was too late to worry about that now, as if she was going to strain her voice, she’d already done it.  “But it isn’t a privilege to only be scared by.  Yes, we are the ones who know we are not alone in the Universe, but we are also the ones that know we are surrounded by friends as well as difficult neighbours.  It is easy to become fixated with the potential dangers posed by the difficult ones, but we must not take our existing friends for granted.  Because it’s through these friendships we get the opportunity to make new friends, friends who can help us develop strength and security.  Remember, a friend can be the Doctor or Article 57 of the Shadow Proclamation or, on the right day, an individual Cyberman or Dalek... but again, I need to ask you to trust me about that.”  

 

Standing up from her perch, Kate took a couple of steps forward, so she was right at the edge of the stage, and able to see the audience more clearly than when she’d been further back from the line of lights keeping the stage bright despite the general darkness of the theatre.  

 

“My objective was to help you see that ‘Science Leads’ applies to all of us.  Some of you will have been told that it’s just the egotistical ambition of a ‘megalomaniac Chief Scientific Officer’...” Kate heard a quickly suppressed muttered ‘idiots’ from her right, which she knew was Win Bambera, who was one of the few who had been present when that particular insult had been hurled at Kate some years earlier.  Despite there being only a handful of very senior UNIT staff in earshot, it had subsequently become one of the nastier rumours about Kate’s successful UNIT career and still managed to stay alive as a rumour now, almost a decade later.  “... ‘Science Leads’ is the way we stay on good terms with our friends and stand up to our enemies in the right way.  ‘Science Leads’ is the strategy that sees the guidance manuals written, but if they’re not clear, or there’s something missing, talk to the Science teams.  If you think that you need something different in field, or have a situation you can’t confidently plan for, ask the Science teams for our thoughts and ideas.  At the very least, we might be able to help you not accidentally end life on Earth as we collectively know it…”  

 

Kate paused as a little ripple of laughter flowed around the room, the words she genuinely believed having the same positive effect they’d had when she was still Geneva based and trying to drag everyone else along with her, no matter how much they kicked and screamed at first.  

 

“...and at best, it can see me buy you lunch!”  

 

This time the laughter was louder and more confident, as everyone appreciated the joke, not just those who knew how dry her sense of humour could be.  

 

“Which reminds me, could the two of you who answered all four questions correctly come and introduce yourselves to me before you leave as I do owe you lunch…but otherwise, thank you for your attention.”

 

Tuning out the general hum of noise and chatter as the full lecture theatre collectively stood up and started to head out to carry on with their lives as planned, Kate made sure sure she had saved the hastily created quiz and responses as she’d almost certainly be asked about it by someone at some point.  Aware of a few people gathering at the front, including the two people she now owed lunch to, she was just about to log out of the presentation system when her phone bleeped, the text message alert bright and shrill against the background hubbub.

 

* * *

 

 

Reaching for her ringing phone with her free hand,  Osgood pushed the door to her office closed with her shoulder as she spoke, then put the stack of papers she was carrying on top of the adjacent filing cabinet with an audible sigh of relief as she answered.

“Mmm?”

“I did remember!” 

“You didn’t need to call…” pointed out Osgood reasonably, tentatively straightening her arm as she felt the pins and needles surge up it.

“Easier than text…actually…”  Kate’s celebration of her triumph was rather short lived.

“If the keyboard and pass scanner disappear, it means you’ve logged out.”  Osgood knew exactly what Kate was thinking, it was what Osgood had thought when she’d seen the designs.

“It does?  Because there’s no message.”  Kate was the first to admit she was not the most disciplined at remembering to log out or lock her computer on her office desk, but she was generally very good when using other computers across UNIT.  Still, it was rather disconcerting not getting any sort of visual confirmation that the terminal was logged out and not just dark.

“No.  I did suggest there should be something, but I could only suggest.”  

“And weren’t listened to.”

“No.”  Osgood did recall the meeting hadn’t gone all that well, with her gentle hints that the abrupt shut down sequence wasn’t going to be all that well received by the intended users not only ignored but actively mocked by the computer team.  “Ow…”  Straightening her arm hadn’t helped all that much, quite the opposite in fact.

“What’s up?”  Kate was fairly confident, based on her ability to interpret her girlfriend’s range of ‘ows’, that Os was dealing with a stubbed toe or sudden burst of cramp rather than a mortal wound, but an ‘ow’ was still an ‘ow’.

“Cramp.  Too many papers.”  Osgood gave her arm a good shake as she spoke.  “That can wait until next week.”  Her arm feeling much better, Os changed the subject, not wanting to talk about her invitable paperwork backlog.  

“I thought you were archiving?” Kate thought she’d heard the distinctive thump of a stack of paperwork landing on the top of a metal filing cabinet, reminding her she had her too heavy briefcase to reclaim before she set off to her next meeting.

“I did, came back through the physics labs…”  Osgood tried to take an extended stroll through the various research labs at the Tower each week if she could.  Not only did it mean that she saw for herself how the various lab teams were working, but it also gave scientists she might otherwise not meet a chance to show her things or, as seemed to be the case this week, give her their reports to ‘have a glance at’.  “I’d forgotten it was getting close to budgets…”  From the gist of the conversations she’d been having as she met people, a lot of her new reading pile was going to be early attempts to get her feeling inclined to promise expensive new equipment to particular research projects.

“Don’t remind me.”  Kate experienced exactly the same persuasion tactics from some of the scientists that Osgood did, but she also had it from all the other disciplines within the Tower, as well as from Osgood’s fellow Senior Scientists around the world, though they mostly confined their pleas to email.  Between Whitehall, the Tower and Geneva, Kate probably spent about six months in every twelve talking about budgets with someone.  “Win’s waving at me.”

“Go.”  Sitting down in her chair, Osgood hadn’t expected Kate to call, nevermind have time for a chat, especially when she was seeing her in a few hours and they were hopefully spending a work free weekend together.  “Oh…”  Having said that, since she had managed to talk to Kate, she should probably tell her about her conversation with Fran.

“Yes?”  

“Fran might wish you happy anniversary…”

“Ah.” Kate acknowledged Win’s wave by taking a step or two back towards her jacket and briefcase.  “Thanks for the tip off.”  It wasn’t that Kate had deliberately avoided telling Fran it was their anniversary, it just hadn’t come up during any of their phone calls or emails during the last few weeks when Kate had spent more time in Whitehall or Geneva than the Tower.  She had, however, deliberately avoided actually explaining anything about her relationship with Osgood when Fran had first arrived to work for her, but then she’d avoided talking about a lot of things when Osgood had been ‘away’.  “Anything else?”

“You’re loveable when you’re sciencing.”  Osgood was fairly confident her ears were glowing bright red again, but she felt happier now Kate knew she’d filled in some of the missing blanks for Fran, knowing Kate would recognise the description of herself from the time in their relationship before Osgood came to work at UNIT too.

“Fran said that?”  teased Kate, taking another couple of steps towards the others, not bothered about Fran knowing that about her, more concerned that she’d left her girlfriend having to discover and fill in some blanks on her own.  “And sorry I’d not explained to her sooner.”  Kate still wasn’t entirely sure why exactly it had only come up now, but she assumed it was to do with her returning to the lecturer’s podium so to speak, somewhere she hadn’t been for a good few years now she thought about it.

“Daft fool…” countered Os, smiling at Kate’s predictable silliness, knowing she was limited in what she could do or say given the time available and her location.  “...and don’t be silly.”  As far as she was concerned, there was nothing Kate needed to apologise for.  “Go do some sciencing.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Congratulations Dr Padwinkski.”

“Thank you Colonel.”  Jess glanced at who else was gathered at the front of the lecture hall, trying to work out who was the other person who had got all four of Kate’s questions correct, only to realise it had to be the Colonel.  “And congratulations to you.”  At least she wasn’t the only one who might have a bit of a tricky time explaining her presence in a lecture she wasn’t actually invited to.

“Thanks…”  Maria Walsh adjusted the shoulder strap of her bag in an effort to not look as awkwardly uncomfortable as she was feeling, before deciding it probably wasn’t working.  “...not sure how though.”  She leaned forwards slightly so she could mutter a bit more quietly, not yet certain how the General was going to react to her ‘success’.  “And I’m not supposed to be here.”

“That makes two of us.”

“Three I think…”  Maria moved so she could actually talk quietly to the scientist while they waited for Kate to finish packing up.

“Three?”  Jess wasn’t sure who the third person was that Maria was thinking of: most of the ‘gatecrashers’ to the lecture arriving once Kate had taken over, and apart from the Colonel and herself, everyone else was currently making a rush for the exits, presumably eager to get some lunch or start their weekend.

“The General.”  Maria nodded in the direction of Win Bambera who, in contrast to Maria’s own civilian clothes, was dressed in full uniform, complete with the hat that she’d tossed in Kate’s direction earlier.

“Oh, I see.”  Jess hadn’t actually met Win Bambera yet, but Max had spoken about her quite a bit.  She was struggling to reconcile the stories she’d heard about ‘Aunt Win’ with the rather formidable looking uniformed General currently talking to the ‘BOOM’ guy though.  “And it’s four.”

“What’s four?” asked Kate, hearing the end of Jess and Maria’s conversation, having decided to give Win a bit of a wide berth when she saw that whoever Win and Charlie were talking to, there was much hat waving all of a sudden.

“People who aren’t supposed to be here, we think,” said Jess cautiously, deciding she felt less nervous if she just looked at Kate and kept trying to remember she was her boyfriend’s mother.  “Including us two.”

“Win and…”  Kate cast her eye about the room, not seeing anyone else who she thought Jess and Maria would recognise well enough to then know they didn’t belong in the scheduled Intergalactic Duty Lecture, before realising who the fourth was.  “Me?”

“Technically...” clarified Maria, understanding what Jess had been thinking and remembering seeing a security brief yesterday which had identified Greyhound One as being in back to back meetings for all of today.

“You’re right.  And good question by the way…”  Kate put her hands in her trouser pockets and looked at Maria thoughtfully.  “...which reminds me, is this a recent interest or a long buried passion?”

“Snail tax?”  Kate’s wince made Maria realise she could have phrased that better, but it was too late now.  “Neither Dr Stewart…this was an intelligence led mission.  My original interest had been the Mess.”

“I see...”  Kate appreciated Maria’s sense of humour, but saw that Jess was looking a little lost.  “The Colonel here has just presented the soldier version of the ‘gossip got me curious so I skipped lunch’ defence Jess.”  

“Oh.”  Jess looked from Kate to Maria Walsh who, despite what Jess was expecting to see, was actually smiling, making her realise that while ‘Colonel Walsh’ was her boyfriend’s Commanding Officer, she was also someone who, like the rest of them, was perhaps a little bit in awe of Greyhound One.  And now she knew that ‘intelligence led mission’ could mean ‘acted on gossip...“...that explains the donuts.”

“Donuts?”  Maria wasn’t following, but had a feeling based on Kate’s smirk, that it might have something to do with Max.  “How many did Captain Stewart consume?”

“Three.”  Jess’s cheeks were feeling warm as she realised she’d fallen for a good old fashioned fishing exercise by the Colonel, with Kate now looking far too keen to hear what happened next.  “He came by after his shift, on Tuesday…he’d missed lunch.”

“And you just happened to have donuts…” pointed out Kate dryly, knowing both Max and Gordy were expert at just appearing when there was food going spare.

“Lots of donuts,” agreed Jess, remembering how their experiment had failed earlier in the morning and so, with everyone in the lab feeling rather dejected, four of them had each gone out during lunch and bought a dozen donuts as a ‘pick-me-up’ gesture for their colleagues.  Forty-eight donuts was rather more than five dejected biologists could cope with, and even with the help of their colleagues in Bio-2, there were still plenty left over.  “So he was useful, eating three.”  Jess decided Kate probably didn’t need to know he’d taken another two with him.

“Max is certainly useful like that,” agreed Kate, seeing Win was finally past the hat waving point in her conversation and appeared to be preparing to join their impromptu huddle.  “Gordy too…”  Kate briefly putting a sisterly hand on Maria’s shoulder, suddenly recalling the Colonel had two sons that had just started senior school.  “...yours will be eating you out house and home in a couple of years Maria…” Kate promised, thinking about how much larger the food shop became each week during school holidays when she was catering for the voracious appetites of two teenage boys.  “...unless it’s mushrooms.”  She had no idea what she’d done wrong when it came to mushrooms, but neither Gordy nor Max liked them.

“I’m not sure I’m all that keen on mushrooms now…” admitted Maria, thinking back to some of the examples Kate had mentioned when she’d been lecturing.  Some of them sounded truly horrible in terms of side effects and yet appeared to look almost identical to regular edible Earth mushrooms.

“Don’t let Kate put you off!” Win Bambera had finally managed to shake loose the extra pompous Board Member who unfortunately wasn't retiring until next year, and had heard the Colonel’s conclusion as she came over to them.  “There are lots of lovely mushrooms that don’t see the world end if you serve them on toast.”  Win had a particular soft spot for mushrooms on toast with a poached egg.  “We’ve not met, I’m Winifred Bambera.”  She thrust her hand out to Jess, presuming her to be one of the people who had got a perfect score on Kate’s quiz.  “Most people call me General.”

“Jess Padwinkski, General...”  Jess wasn’t quite sure if, having shaken the General’s hand, she was supposed to carry on and explain where in UNIT she worked, but the General cut in.  

“Exobiologist!”  Win was quite good at remembering names, but only if she had something to help her remember them with.  “You’re one of the glowy bouncing lot.”

“Err…”  Of everything that the General might have said, Jess had not been expecting to be described in those terms.

“You were here in May for the Symposium?” prompted Kate gently, remembering Win meeting Gordy’s girlfriend at the Chelsea Flower Show but not Jess.  

“Oh!”  Grinning at Kate  in a mixture of relief and thanks, Jess turned back to the General.  “Yes General, I’m a member of the Iridescent Collagens Workgroup…”  Jess now understood why Max’s ‘Aunt’ was thinking of her like that, Max having explained what she had missed.  “And stood in for Osgood at the Symposium...”

“And missed seeing Ossy and Ermintrude,” agreed Win, glad to have that mystery solved, but now presented with a new mystery.   “You look lost Colonel.”

“I…”  Maria was more than lost, she was baffled.

“Have you had lunch yet Win?” asked Kate pointedly, deciding she needed to intervene before she collapsed in either a fit of laughter or mortification.  “Because I haven’t, and I’m guessing that Jess and Maria are the two people I now owe lunch to?”  She saw Maria and Jess both shrug and nod, clearly deciding they didn’t want to join in the conversation.  “Right, that’s settled.”  Kate looked at her watch and saw what time it was.  “Since I’m buying lunch, let’s go see Mrs Woon.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Thank you.”  Putting her passport and boarding pass in her waterproof jacket’s pocket, Osgood set off through the boarding gate lounge until she reached the seat she’d spotted from the queue.  Tucked behind a pillar, angled towards the windows, were two seats that, unless the flight was full to capacity and extensively delayed, she was unlikely to have to share.  

 

In Osgood’s experience, there were always two or three seats like this in every airport gate lounge she’d been to - a small row of seats tucked in some corner or alcove, not quite aligned with the other seats and never on the original plan.  Adrift from everything else, they usually managed to achieve that small degree of extra personal space that airport design had invariably been ruthlessly trying to eliminate at all stages of a passenger’s transit.  In fact, they’d been so successful at it that airlines had been increasingly forced to work out how to engineer personal space back into the airport experience, with exclusive check in zones and dedicated airline lounges becoming almost more important to many travellers now than what they were being offered in the aircraft.

 

Reaching the seats, Osgood put her rucksack down on the right hand side chair of the pair and unfastened her coat.   Normally, she wouldn’t worry about taking her coat off at the departure gate, not expecting to be there for long enough for it to matter, but the view from the window was not good.  Even UNIT’s more enterprising aliens hadn’t really worked out how cross-continental travel was achieved without a vehicle, and since their plane had not yet arrived, Osgood wasn’t going to kid herself that she’d only be sat in the overheated lounge for just a few minutes.  Shrugging out of her fleece lined waterproof coat, but keeping her scarf on, Osgood left her passport and boarding pass in the pocket but pulled her mobile out of the other pocket, then tidily folded the coat up and put it on the other seat.  Moving her rucksack so it was resting on top of the coat, Osgood checked the ends of her scarf were level still and sat down.

 

Now all she could do was wait.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


“Merci Madame, et bonne vacances…”  Kate kept her smile fixed despite the bone crushing handshake that accompanied the final moments of diplomatic smalltalk.  “...au revoir Madame, Monsieur…”  Her hand released, she was able to step back and watch in relief as finally, with only the minimal of ultrasonic twittering, the two elderly and eccentric (even by Wuppian standards according to Tronkie, and that was saying something apparently) ‘travel agents’ were escorted through the third floor reception area and out of Kate’s earshot and UNIT’s jurisdiction, much to her relief.

 

Rubbing the back of her neck, Kate stood in the middle of the carpeted lobby seemingly unaware of the flow of people moving around her.  Pulling her hand away from her neck in a single, sharp movement that was accompanied by a wince, she thrust her other hand in her jacket pocket and, in what was a bonus miracle over and above her already exhausted quota, managed to answer her phone before the second vibrating pulse.

 

“Kate Stewart.”

 

“It’s me.”  Shifting in the seat, trying to find the elusive not-too-uncomfortable position to sit in, Osgood blinked at her girlfriend’s tone.  “Bad time?”

 

“Perfect time…” corrected Kate, her voice immediately warming as she registered who was on the phone.  “...my glasses are on my desk…” she explained, knowing Osgood wouldn’t be surprised to hear that she’d become separated from them, and therefore confirming her ‘perfect time’ comment was genuinely warm and sincere  “...I think.”  For some reason, she was notoriously useless at keeping track of her glasses when she was at Central Command, invariably leaving them behind when she went off somewhere.  “Where are you?”  As she headed for the lifts, Kate looked over to the wall art which, was had been described by art critics when it was unveiled as ‘using the ancient rubric of geometric spatial relationships to re-contextualise the status quo with it’s constantly shifting metamorphoses,’ though Kate prefered Flo’s rather more succinct assessment that the ‘circles, dots and lines move and blink.’  Few outside of UNIT’s inner circle now actually remembered that the ‘wall art’ was actually a computer programme replicating a Gallifreyan clock, with the four quarters showing the time in Geneva, London, Earth Lunar and Galactic Standard respectively, with even fewer still being able to use it to tell the time.  “Shouldn’t you be taking off in five minutes?”  

 

“No plane.”  Osgood looked out of the window again, double checking that an aircraft hadn’t appeared in the last two minutes.  “It’s now supposed to land at quarter to.”  Osgood knew Kate could do the ‘turnaround maths’ as well as she could.  “And it’s only ten past.”

 

“Is it?”  Kate looked back at the ‘clocks’ again.  “Either I’m rusty or the lobby clock is fast.”  The lift chime attracted her attention and she walked to the lift at the far end, waiting for the doors to open.  “I must be rusty.”  She had been very good at telling the time in Gallifreyan when she’d worked in Geneva full time, but was prepared to accept she’d lost the knack.

 

“You’re not that rusty.”  Osgood had been drawing patterns on her knee while Kate spoke.  “And I gave up telling Gerald that the lobby clock is fast.”  Although on a conventional watch face twenty past and twenty five past were only subtly different, on a Gallifreyan clock configured to display a cycle of 24 sub cycles, each of 60, 60 unit sub cycles, minutes ten and twenty-five were visually very different.  “What were you in the lobby for?”  The 3rd floor lobby in Geneva was like the benches by the Ravens at the Tower - somewhere Kate always liked to get to during her day, but rarely managed it.  It was also, unlike the Ground floor lobby, not alien free and therefore usually far more interesting from a ‘people-watching’ perspective.

 

“Escorting the Wuppian imposters out…”  Kate waited for the lift doors to close, relieved she was able to have it to herself.  “They should have been met by the Judoon now: we eventually agreed an intercept route that saw them collected from the underground car park.”  That had been most of her early morning gone, with the complexities of where the Galactic Warrant could be served by the Judoon without compromising UNIT’s relative neutrality requiring six maps, four lawyers, Kate, Dr Flemhain (the Central Command Senior Scientist who worked for Kate when she was wearing her Chief Scientific Officer’s ‘hat’), General Bambera and Colonel Walsh.  “Oh, and it turns out they weren’t just the wrong Wuppians, they weren’t Wuppian.”   A part of Kate was desperately curious to know what species they had been, and to discover the technology they were using to modify their appearance so they resembled the Wuppian species, right down to the ultrasonic twittering style of speech, but for once she was content to let the mystery go.  “Which was a whole other set of paperwork that I’m glad we don’t have to do.”  It was weeks like this one that reminded her how straightforward life at the Tower could be, assuming no one was trying to take over the planet of course.

 

“How’s the headache?” asked Osgood, picking up in the faint hint of distracted weariness in her girlfriend’s voice and ignoring the alien mystery.  “Whatever they are, they were very…”

 

“Squeaky?” The lift arrived at the sixth floor and the doors opened, enabling Kate to get out and head along the familiar corridor to the office at the far end.  “And complacent.  It never occurred to them that we might be able to listen.”  The Wuppians, even when being impersonated, primarily communicated in frequencies inaudible to humans, though their lowest tones did land at the upper end of what was audible.  

 

It meant that their conversations with each other were characterised by frenetic movement of the facial structures in apparent silence, apart from the occasional shrill squeaking sounds when they suddenly shifted into their lower registers.  Even if you understood Wuppian dialects, their conversations were generally impossible to follow without the correct acoustic boosting technology, technology that the Roqurting had loaned UNIT so that they could help them.  It was technology that they could, in accordance with one of the subsections of Article 27, only possess on a temporary basis for a specific authorised objective appropriately sanctioned… or, as Win had summarised it once she and Kate had understood exactly what Tronkie was asking them to help with earlier in the week, they were allowed to have it as long as they did the Roqurting’s dirty work, and gave it back afterwards.  Turned out intergalactic friendships came with string attached, just like conventional terrestrial friendships could.

 

“Very squeaky, but the translating thing worked…”  Kate rubbed the back of her neck again, and looked at the small traces of residue on her fingers.  “...and the glue has come off.  I wonder why they picked French?”  

 

“French?”  Osgood changed the phone from her right ear to her left, adjusting her glasses in the process.  “French passports?”

 

“No, French language, to talk to us in.  Not that we’ll know.”  Kate had arrived at the far end of the corridor and entered the office, shutting the door behind her.  “Anyway, how’s you?”  Leaning against the cool wood of the closed door, in the office that was so quiet she could hear her watch tick was wonderful, and Kate sighed in relief, something that Osgood picked up on without really noticing.

 

“Still wondering how your headache is.”

 

“Fading…”  Kate pushed herself away from the door and headed over to the desk where her glasses were, much to her relief.  “...no more squeaking aliens and finding my glasses has helped.”  She sat down in the chair behind the desk and kicked off her shoes, finding them not quite as comfortable today for some reason as they usually were.  “It will be gone by the time I see you,” she promised, refusing to entertain any other idea.

 

“Should I still come to you?” asked Osgood, looking at her watch and doing the maths.  “Because I’ll be landing about an hour late I think.”  That was not the way Osgood had ever wanted to start a weekend in Geneva when Kate had lived there, and she wasn’t liking it much now.  “I  hope it’s only an hour.”  She had already worked out the timetable had allowed about forty-five minutes for the plane to complete the turnaround process and depart as the 4.30pm flight to Geneva, but there were times when the turnaround process became shortened and took less than that.  She was hoping that the airline decided that this was an ideal time to speed up their turnaround, without compromising safety obviously.

 

“If you don’t mind?”  Kate typed in her computer password with one finger and brought up her email inbox, wondering what delights would be gathered there.  It wasn’t a disaster if Os didn’t want to come to Central Command, but it would complicate things slightly.

 

“I don’t mind,” assured Osgood promptly, looking out of the window to where the plane was supposed to be but ‘seeing’ her girlfriend chewing on her lip, a slight frown on her face while she tried to decide whether Os was just agreeing to be agreeable.  “And no, I’m not agreeing to be agreeable…” Osgood heard the giveaway little huff from Kate that confirmed she’d been correct in her mental picture.  “...I’ll take a sleeping bag on the floor as long as it’s a bit of floor next to you…”  Osgood had missed Kate these last few weeks, and couldn’t see any reason to pretend otherwise.  For two people who lived in the same house and supposedly worked in the same office, they had only been in the same bed at the same time on 5 occasions since the end of August.

 

“Should I cancel the pocket-sprung mattress then?”  Kate pushed away the computer mouse, her emails holding no interest now: she’d just work harder while Os was in the air.  She’d missed Os, and wasn’t remotely concerned that might make her sound like a sap.

 

“Is that a clue?” Osgood had no idea what the weekend’s plan was, having happily agreed to Kate surprising her, with Kate’s surprises rarely triggering an asthma attack, unlike the ‘surprises’ that arose from UNIT work or had been hatched her sister when they were children.

 

“Not knowingly.”  Kate tried to remember what she knew about the hotel beds.  “I didn’t ask about the mattress structure.”  She’d had a long enough checklist to work through as she was determined to make the weekend as perfect as she could, starting with ensuring no duck down or feather anywhere near the bed.  “But I can confirm there will be a mattress...”  She swallowed, surprised when she felt her stomach flip in what was the beginnings of nervous excitement.  “...and friendly pillows…”  ‘Friendly’ was their developed shorthand catchall way of describing any and all fabrics and bedding that didn’t trigger Osgood’s lungs’ rebellious streak.  “...but that’s not a clue either.”

 

“My international woman of mystery,” teased Os, shifting the seat, instinctively burrowing her chin down into the folds of her scarf, recalling the nickname a couple of her friends had used to describe Kate when Osgood first started going to Geneva to visit Kate.

 

“Hardly...”  Kate leaned back into her chair and turned away from the desk so she could look out of the window at the still bright sky - sunset wasn’t for another couple of hours, but it felt much later in the day than not long after five, or maybe that was wishful thinking.

 

“Are you suggesting you’re a well thumbed classic?” Osgood stretched her legs out in front of her, missing her little pull along suitcase that would, at this point in a delay, be able to double as a footstool.  Not that she was complaining - it had certainly been easier leaving the Tower and getting to the airport with only her rucksack, and Kate had been quite right to point out that the UNIT private plane wasn’t going to notice Osgood’s weekend bag.

 

“I was going to say open book…” Kate crossed her right leg over her left and absently smoothed the wrinkles out around her knee.  “...but yours sounds more fun...”

 

“What’s wrong?” Osgood switched the phone from her left hand back to her right and sat up in her chair.

 

“What makes you think there’s anything wrong?”  The question could have been asked defensively, but Kate wasn’t feeling defensive, just curious.  She had long ago accepted that in lots of ways, Os knew her better than she knew herself, which could have been irritating or infuriating, and had been irritating and stifling in previous relationships, but somehow wasn’t with Os.

 

“Foxing or dog-earred.”  Osgood had realised the opportunity she’d given Kate a second after she’d likened her to a ‘well-thumbed classic’, which would have usually been a split second after her girlfriend had already come up with a wry response.  “Mostly dog-earred…”  Kate was particularly partial to a good canine themed wordplay given their ‘Greyhound’ status and the other canine-related codewords favoured by UNIT in the UK.  “Not that yours wasn’t good…” continued Os distractedly, rubbing her left ear and dislodging her glasses in the process.  “..but…”

 

“Os?”  Kate wasn’t disagreeing with Osgood’s assessment, but it was now her turn to notice something that her girlfriend had missed.

 

“Mmm?”

 

“Breathe…” 

 

“Oh!”  Kate’s gentle prompt had an immediate opposite effect as Osgood took a short, sharp and far too shallow breath in, but the nudge did make her start to pay attention to the rhythm of her lungs, taking extra care to focus on keeping to a calm and steady ‘in and out’ cadence, rather than trying to cram too many words into a single breath.  Doing the former would mean she avoided using her inhaler too intensively before she boarded the plane, while doing the latter would see her potentially wheeze all the way to Geneva and feel less than great for most of the evening.

 

“...and you’re right…” Once she’d heard Os’s breathing shift back to a more sustainable rhythm, Kate continued to respond to her girlfriend’s astute observation.  “...dog-earred paperback is nearer the mark for this old Greyhound…”  She let her head drop back against the top edge of the seat back and closed her eyes.  “...and no, that’s not an age related observation…”  Kate opened her eyes, realising she wasn’t quite correct about that.  “...they’re just all so new.”

 

“You’re allowed to miss him.”  Osgood had been wondering since Wednesday if that was the issue, but hadn’t really had an opportunity to ask.

 

“Miss who?”

 

“Claude.”  Claude Tredoment, long-time adversary of Kate’s (nor Osgood’s biggest fan) and seemingly permanent fixture of the Central Command landscape had, the previous week, stood down from the Board Oversight and Alien Ethics Committees on the grounds of ill health.  Convinced by his family and friends to take a less intense path that his body could navigate without detrimentally sapping his spirit, there was a very different look and feel to those Committees now, even before the actual meetings.

 

“He gave me a hug...”  Kate didn’t need to tell Os she was right: she was Os, she knew Kate, better than Kate knew herself.

 

“When?”   Osgood couldn’t ever remember Kate mentioning being hugged by the rather pedantic, non-scientific Central Command Grandee, which meant it was probably a very recent event.  “At the do?”

 

“Yes…”  The ‘do’ had happened on Wednesday evening, a carefully choreographed piece of Central Command pomp and pageantry that saw an evening of drinks, dinner and a few very well-chosen remarks, starting a traditional five minutes after the papers for the first meeting after his retirement had been circulated.  It was a uniquely UNIT tradition, to time a leaving party in that way, but somehow it worked, with the party generally managing to strike a balance between reflecting on the honourand’s past successes and contribution to UNIT’s yet to come future success.  No one was quite sure exactly how the tradition started, but privately Kate had a feeling both her father, Win and perhaps Tom Osgood too, knew rather more about its origins than they’d ever admitted.  Still, it sort of made sense for an organisation with a Time-Lord on the payroll…  “Did I tell you Win was late?”

 

“No…”  Osgood thought back to Wednesday evening and, perhaps more relevantly, Thursday morning, which had dawned grey, wet and Scottish.  “...but then I was on my way to Rum and Eigg…”  She’d only returned from Scotland late last night, and while she and Kate had spoken a fair bit in the last couple of days, it had generally been about the anomalous readings Osgood was trying to understand or their joint effort at keeping the Tower, the Scientific Divisions and Central Command ‘ticking over’.  “So who did the remarks?” 

 

The ‘remarks’ were made by someone suitably senior during the drinks reception before the dinner, whereas the reply by the evening’s centre of attention was made after the dinner, to a much smaller and more intimate group.  This meant, so Kate’s father had always said, that the speaker on behalf of UNIT could get their speech over with early and then enjoy a drink, while for evening’s ‘centre of attention’, it meant they had the opportunity to deliver their speech to an audience that was drunk enough and small enough that the jokes got the laugh the leaver thought they deserved.

 

“Who do you think?” Kate instinctively rubbed her neck, only this time it was to work at the stiffness she was starting to notice, rather than to try and get rid of Tronkie’s loaned listening device ‘thing’ that she wasn’t allowed to know about except that it worked and was sticky.

 

“You?”  Osgood grinned at the mental image that was forming, able to picture her girlfriend, hand in her pocket, giving a well-constructed speech made up of a few minutes of anecdotes and compliments, finished with a toast to Claude.  “In French?”  

 

“Mostly...the toast included a bit in German.”

 

“What was the toast?  Remember my German isn’t as Swiss as yours...”  Osgood moved her coat to her lap and her rucksack down from the seat next to her and put it between her feet, the departure gate lounge seating now in sufficient demand that someone was going to possibly want the out of the way seat if it was all that was left.   “...so might need that bit in translation please?”  Osgood’s German, like her French was very ‘textbook’, which presented few challenges when reading and writing German or French in Switzerland or UNIT generally, as the officially used ‘Swiss Standard German’ and ‘Swiss Standard French’ weren’t all that different from ‘Standard German’ or ‘Standard French’.  However, unlike spoken Swiss French, spoken Swiss German could be very different to the written form and, if Kate’s toast ended with a local ‘joke’, Osgood was unlikely to get it in the original German.

 

“I can’t remember it exactly in French…”  For some reason, anything that required a bit of writing in advance saw Kate work out what she wanted to say in English and then translate it, “...but the English version was…”  She put on her glasses and picked up the piece of paper she’d written down the toast on.  “To Claude, without whose dedication and commitment, we would not be the organisation we are today… A ‘man for all seasons’...  _ der Geist seiner Zeit.”   _

 

“A ‘man for all seasons’...”  Osgood frowned in concentration as she tried to place what sounded like a literary reference. “... that’s about Thomas More sticking to his principles...”

 

“Yes, and it was written before he died for them,” pointed out Kate mildly, “1520, by a Latin teacher. I checked.”  And crucially, as far as she was concerned given the occasion she’d been caught up in, that meant it was  _ technically _ a compliment, even it Claude’s principles had seen him most often influence his Committees to be at odds with Kate and the ‘Science Leads’ approach.  She might not have agreed with them, but she couldn’t fault his commitment to them.

 

“When?”  Osgood wasn’t disputing Kate had checked her reference - she was too good an academic to not be certain of her evidence base and references, but Osgood was finding it hard to believe that Kate had found the time to do that research if she’d had to step in for Win at the last minute.  Equally though, if Kate had had enough advance notice to research a reference, she’d have also had time to mention it to Os or, more likely, double book herself somewhere else.

 

“When did I check?”  Kate thought for a moment, wondering when it had been, knowing it had been long before she’d started working for UNIT or even met Os for that.  “I don’t remember exactly, but it was about the same time Jonathan and I stopped speaking…” Jonathan was Gordy’s father, and the final attempts at talking to him had been about a year before she’d met Osgood.  “Oh, I see what you’re thinking…” Kate understood now that Os was still struggling to understand how she’d even ended up making the speech.  “...no, I didn’t have time to grumble, as I already had a drink in my hand when I was told Win wasn’t going to make it.”

 

“Oh.”  That made some sense to Osgood, especially as by the time Kate’s evening had finished, Osgood had just arrived on Rum and Kate had correctly known her girlfriend hadn’t been in the right mood for Geneva gossip.  And she still wasn’t ready to remember Thursday yet in detail yet.

 

“Stuck in a lift.”

 

“What?”  Osgood was startled out of her own thoughts by Kate’s comment.

 

“The answer to the question you’re definitely not asking me…” teased Kate, now able to see the funny side of the evening, “...is that Win was unable to make the speech because she was stuck in the lift with a claustrophobic Drinkie.  Who sends his love by the way.”  Drinkie and Osgood had an unexpected friendship, even by UNIT’s standards, with Drinkie developing something of an obsession for chess that he’d ended up with, as Tronkie put it, quite the ‘Earth-crush’ on Osgood.

 

“Poor…”  Osgood was unable to decide who was the worse off in that situation - Drinkie for having his claustrophobia challenged or Win, for having to cope with Drinkie without Tronkie’s mediating guidance.  “...you,” she concluded diplomatically, watching as an aircraft with the correct airline paintwork appeared to be approaching the Gate, making Osgood start to wonder if the update should have been that they were taking off at quarter to.  “What did you say in German?”

 

_ “Der Geist seiner Zeit.”  _

 

There was a long pause as Osgood not only worked out what Kate had said, but also attempted to work out what her girlfriend had meant.  “Is  _ zeitgeist  _ not a German loan word in French?”  Although grammatically correct, that question wasn’t sounding like it was saying what she meant.  “I mean…”

 

“The French for  _ zeitgeist  _ is  _ zeitgeist. _ ”  Kate took her glasses off.  “The German for  _ zeitgeist  _ is  _ zeitgeist. _ ”  There was silence.  “Sorry, couldn’t resist…”

 

“Silly idiotic thing…”  said Osgood fondly, quietly amused at her girlfriend’s silliness but not distracted from her puzzle.  “Der Geist seiner Zeit...the spirit of his time?”  Osgood stood up, phone still held firmly against her ear, and carefully worked her way into her coat, cautiously optimistic that maybe she’d be boarding the plane soon.

 

“Yes.  It’s the phrase Hegel used, and we know how much Claude loves Hegel.”  Rarely had a meeting gone by without Claude Tredoment reminding everyone else that his area of academic expertise was philosophy, with his most often name-dropped philosophers being Hegelians, and Georg Hegel referenced more than anyone else.  As philosophical approaches went, it wasn’t the most obvious fit with UNIT.

 

“How many times did he mention it in his speech?” 

 

“Four.  And it was a short speech by Claude’s standards.”

 

“Oh dear.”  Osgood switched the phone to her left hand so she could put her right arm into her coat sleeve.  “So your toast…”  She had a nagging feeling that there was something she’d not yet spotted in Kate’s words, but without having it in writing in front of her, Osgood needed it repeated.  “...can you read it again please?  Slowly?”

 

“To Claude..” began Kate, reaching for her glasses so she could read the next bit, knowing Os was onto her.  “... without whose dedication and commitment…”

 

“By which you meant love of the sound of his own voice and refusal to take any hints…”

 

“Mmm…”  Kate was grinning at Osgood’s perceptiveness, unsurprised that she was seeing through Kate’s diplomatic ego stroking language.  “...we would not be the organisation we are now… “  

 

“...thanks for resisting every change ever proposed and only supporting his own ideas…Kate!”  Osgood didn’t need to be reminded of the rest, which she’d already worked out was a subtle insinuation that he was effectively a stubborn dinosaur, though you had to be very good at ‘reading’ Kate to spot it given how sincerely complimentary she would have sounded.

 

“What?”  Knowing she was ‘caught’ now that Osgood had heard what she’d meant as well as what she’d said, Kate tossed aside her glasses again.  “He hugged me!”  It had been a level of effusive thanks she could have managed without, but no matter what was their personal history, Kate had spoken her few well chosen words warmly and with a handful of exceptions, everyone had heard them as the kind and generous compliments they were supposed to be.  Outside of his obstructiveness on various committees, he had been a very dedicated member of UNIT, in his way.  “And his wife made me promise to visit them when I’m in the neighbourhood.”

 

“Where’s their neighbourhood?”

 

“A very pretty little village somewhere not far from Mont Blanc apparently, glorious mountain air so Francoise was telling me, she made Win promise to give me the directions...”

 

“Mountain air means altitude…”  Osgood wasn’t overly fond of higher altitudes, especially as she usually found herself at altitude when it was also cold.  It didn’t sound like a neighbourhood she and Kate would find themselves in deliberately too often, with neither of them feeling the need now to pretend that they enjoyed winter sports.   “...but a kind invitation...”  And, by the sounds of it, not one that Mrs Tredoment would have made if she’d picked up on the more ‘backhand’ meaning in Kate’s compliments.  “When did Win escape the lift?”

 

“Just in time for the starter.  Francoise found me after Claude’s speech during coffee.”  Win had been seated with the Tredoments, whereas Kate had been seated at the other end of the long table, as befitting her status as Claude’s least favourite member of the UNIT senior staff.  “Is that…?”  Kate picked up the sounds of the airport tannoy system announcing what sounded like Osgood’s flight.

 

“My flight?  Apparently.”  Osgood adjusted her glasses before picking up her rucksack.  “You want me to come find you?”  She really didn’t mind, knowing what a good portion of her girlfriend’s work backlog was because she’d been the one to generate it.  That and Kate would be more likely to be ambushed by someone potentially awkward in either of the lobbies than wherever it was she had found to work.

 

“Thanks, I’m in…”  Kate was about to say ‘my old office’ but stopped herself - it wouldn’t help Os find her, and it was something she wanted to tell Os in person.  “...6103.”

 

“Does my pass work?”  Osgood swapped the phone to her other hand again so she could put her rucksack on properly.  The 6th floor of Central Command was hallowed territory accessible to the select few, with the ‘1’ section of it even more restricted.  Os knew she could access the 6th floor, but didn’t remember ever going to the ‘1’ section, with General Bambera’s office being in the ‘2’ section since the last reshuffle.  “Officially?”  Osgood, like Max, occasionally liked extra clarification as to whether something was happening because of their personal relationship with Kate or whether it was the ordinary course of UNIT.

 

“Yes.  It’s permanently mine now, as CSO.”  She’d resisted having an office in Central Command when she’d transferred to the Tower, not liking the suggestion she’d be back in Geneva frequently enough to justify the floorspace.  But these last couple of months had been ridiculous, and she’d finally given in and requested an office again.  “So all Senior Scientists are cleared, plus Tower Command.”  Kate had been adamant - anyone who could get to her office at the Tower without additional clearances (which wasn’t everyone at the Tower), had to have the equivalent level of access to her in Geneva.  “So you get it twice, officially.”

 

“Thank you.  Don’t work too hard…” instructed Osgood, joining the back of the boarding queue.  “...I’m just about to board.”

 

“I promise not to.”  Work was about the last thing on Kate’s mind now, but she knew she had to force herself to do some for the next couple of hours until Os arrived.  “Love you.”

 

“Love you too, and see you soon.”

 

Out of excuses, Kate put aside her phone and put on her glasses.  

 

Two hours.

 

She could concentrate on UNIT for two more hours...


	11. Chapter 11

 

It took Kate a moment to work out that what had interrupted her concentration was a knock on her office door.  Glancing at the clock in the corner of her computer screen, she sighed when she realised it was too early to be Osgood.

 

“Entrez!”  As she called out, she clicked on the browser window she’d previously opened and refreshed it, prompting her to smile: Os had landed.

 

“I’m relieved someone’s pleased to see me…”

 

“What?”  Surprised, Kate looked up at the door and pulled her reading glasses off.  “Sorry Win, didn’t see you there.”

 

“So that smile wasn’t for me.”  General Win Bambera leaned against the doorframe, her briefcase at her feet and her hat hanging from her fingers.  “Didn’t think so to be honest.”

 

“I…”  Kate couldn’t come up with a way of contradicting Win’s statement without tying herself up in a tangle of double negatives, so changed her conversational approach.  “Hello Win, wasn’t expecting you.” Kate genuinely smiled with amusement at Win’s pointed eye roll and stuck out tongue. “And I am pleased to see you.” Kate closed the airport arrivals browser window and gave Win her full attention.  “To what do I owe this visit?”

 

“Would you believe me if I said I was sizing the place up to know what ‘welcome to your new office’ plant to bring you on Monday?”

 

“Plant? No.”  Kate pushed her chair back from the desk so she had enough room to cross her right leg over her left at the knee.  “Thank you. But your spare decanter and a decent bottle on the other hand…” On one level, Kate did feel a little bit cheeky presuming Win would lend her a decanter, but then she reminded herself that Win was most of the reason she now had an actual office in Geneva again.

 

“That I can do,” agreed Win, relieved: whiskey was within her comfort zone, horticulture was not.  “You’ll get it on Monday.”

 

“Tuesday is fine.”  Kate had no intention on setting foot in Central Command on Monday, or Geneva if she could help it.  “I’m not here on Monday.”

 

“Tower?”  Win knew that this wasn’t going to be exactly like last time, with Kate needing to be in London rather more than when she’d ‘just’ been CSO in Geneva, but she hadn’t yet asked if Kate had any idea what sort of work pattern she was going to follow.

 

“A day off.”  Kate couldn’t actually remember what a weekday off felt like.  “Tabby was going to have to request a redesign of the HR IT system otherwise.”  Tabby in this context was the HR Director, based at the Tower, and who was steadily bringing all the UNIT human resources function out of the 18th century.

 

“Do I want to know?”  Win had been sceptical at first, when Kate had mentioned she had finally found someone she was prepared to let loose on the UNIT policies, but then she considered herself to be of a generation who didn’t see how ‘human’ resources could be of use to an organisation with as many soldiers and aliens as UNIT.  That had changed when she saw the updated version of Policy 5-22 and was able to tell Flo that same-sex partners were finally ‘counting’ as far as UNIT was concerned. Not that she was planning to need the ‘death in service’ benefits any time soon, but it was reassuring to know she could nominate Flo to get her pension and whatnot were it to happen.

 

“Apparently the leave counters go from 99 to zero.”  Kate hadn’t been sure what had given her the headache in that particular meeting - the explanation from IT as to why it wasn’t straightforward to update the system to cope, or the reminder that she had been so unsuccessful at taking leave in the last few years.  “Apparently I was near enough to 100 days accrued leave to make IT try and explain to me what I needed to authorise in terms of systems redesign.”

 

“Couldn’t you just lend them Osgood?”  The last time Win had found her blood pressure reaching dangerously high levels due to their computer systems, Osgood had managed to invent a workaround in a matter of minutes.

 

“I have no desire to sleep on the couch, thank you!”  Kate was horrified by the suggestion - there was asking a small favour of her girlfriend, like rewriting a couple of laws of physics, and there was relationship suicide, which was anything involving the entirely terrestrial UNIT administrative systems beloved of finance and HR.

 

“Why do I get the feeling there’s a story there?” teased Win, amused by her friend’s reaction - she was struggling to picture Osgood being so offended by Kate professionally that she retaliated in their personal relationship.

 

“Out of hours testing.”  Kate nudged her computer mouse with her hand as she switched legs, so her left was now crossed over her right, not wanting to be caught out with pins and needles just as Os arrived.  “I was keeping Os company downstairs and fell asleep.” Kate rubbed her neck at that particular memory - she was leaving out the part about having a freshly set broken ankle courtesy of some non-memorable but fundamentally clumsy unscheduled alien visitor, or that the ‘falling asleep’ was perhaps more accurately described as the medication kicking in.  “But you didn’t just stop by to take my whiskey order…” she prompted, trying to bring Win back to whatever the point was of her impromptu visit. “...did you?”

 

“No…”  Win cleared her throat.  “...I had an interesting afternoon…”  Win was trying to choose her words carefully, starting to realise she hadn’t actually worked out how to raise what she wanted to know.

 

“Oh?”  Kate wasn’t sure she could describe her afternoon as ‘interesting’ - galactically nerve-wracking perhaps, at least when it came to making sure the Wuppian imposters made it into Judoon custody without compromising Earth’s recognised neutrality.  Chairing the Scientist Promotion Board hadn’t been that much fun either, with the politically well connected candidates being not up to scientific scratch - contacts never trumped chemistry in Kate’s book, and she’d had to spend a good part of the Board reviews reminding others of that.

 

“I think I’ve had most of the Board Oversight Committee ring me up…” Win took another step into Kate’s office, not that she really expected to be overheard at this time of night on a Friday by someone who wasn’t already ‘in the loop’ after the morning’s events.  “...apart from Claude obviously.”

 

“Obviously,” agreed Kate dryly, not yet sure what might have prompted that particularly poe-faced Committee membership to reach for their telephones, but glad that Claude Tredomont was not one of the callers, if only because of his retirement earlier in the week.

 

“And Oscar Weinz.”  Win smiled at the memory of the Chief Archivist responsible for all non-Black Archives across UNIT, a softly spoken Swiss-German gentleman with an unexpected determination to recreate the ‘perfect’ English Cottage Garden despite the much harsher Swiss winters.

 

“He’s not retired.”  Kate had bumped into him on her way into the building just before 8 that morning, and had a very enjoyable conversation with him about his roses.

 

“No, he came by in person.”  Win cleared her throat, the nearest the confident General ever really got to showing her nervousness in an office environment.  “And thoroughly enjoyed your lecture by the way.”

 

“He was there?”  Kate was surprised to hear that - Oscar didn’t strike her as someone who was overly interested in the application of the Duty Laws, though she could understand her fellow gardener’s interest in traditional terran slugs and snails.

 

“Along with half of today’s staff once word got out you had taken over…”  Win’s smile was genuine when she saw Kate’s cheeks colour and her friend’s head dip, trying to take an ultimately ineffective refuge behind her fringe, knowing Kate had never really understood how charismatic she was when in her scientific element.   “It’s a good job Article 57 doesn’t involve the Swiss Fire Regulations…” By Win’s rough estimate, based on what she’d seen for herself inside the Committee Room, as well as what others had told her, they were probably the wrong side of their fire certificate for that particular lecture room by about 150 people by the end of the quiz.

 

“The theatre is capacity about 150!” protested Kate, not quite sure what Win’s point was going to be.  “And Charlie’s department is only slightly under 150.” Admittedly, that was still about 50 more than Kate was expecting the Tax department to consist of.  She had, however, managed to not make a pointed comment about his department being overstaffed and underskilled, which had been all the more diplomatically important once he’d declared he was buying her lunch.   “They can’t all be interested in tax…”

 

“Why did you go to it?”  Win saw the opportunity she was looking for and took it - it was the hallmark of a good General, knowing when to attack.

 

“Hmm?”  Kate was still trying to work out how many of Charlie’s tax team had been in the lecture before the interlopers like Maria Walsh and Jess Padwinkski appeared, so had missed Win’s question.

 

“The lecture.  Why were you really there?” Win hadn’t publically contradicted Kate’s earlier explanation for ducking into the Tax Department’s lecture, which had been something along the lines of not meeting an alien who was renown for detaining UNIT senior figures for hours with questions, and taking offence far too quickly if they tried to excuse themselves before the end of their interrogation.

 

“Originally?”  Kate leaned back in her chair and grinned at Win.  “Because my meeting was cancelled and I wanted to see Os’ idea for myself.  

 

Max had been in Geneva last week for a mandatory training course as part of his Troop Leader responsibilities and had come back positively raving about the system.  He’d been surprised to discover that neither Kate nor Osgood had even known it had been installed, nevermind actually put into use. As much as Kate enjoyed it when one of ‘her scientists’ (even though some of them were technically engineers, they still counted as part of the Chief Scientific Officer’s division) strayed into general UNIT operations activity and sorted out something the IT teams could have solved, she knew her interest in the new lecture system was entirely that of a proud girlfriend who wanted to be able to heap specific praise on Os at the earliest suitable opportunity.

 

“But I did see Drago in the distance...” 

 

“You just had more opportunity to avoid him than you implied,” acknowledged Win, understanding completely why Kate had favoured that reason given the eavesdropping audience congregating around them as they left the Committee Room together.

 

“Something like that.”  Kate was struggling to get used to how easy it was to ‘bump into’ aliens in Central Command, with the majority of the official visitors being encouraged to engage with UNIT in Geneva rather than London.  Only the very long established aliens, like Tronkie, the Yurtapi and the Doctor planned to arrive in London, or the ones wanting to invade the planet and destroy humanity. Either way, there wasn’t all that much chance of Greyhound One bumping into a waffling alien Ambassador in the corridors of the Tower, and any that she did meet usually didn’t go in for small talk.

 

“And you were just going to sit quietly in the back row and watch the demo?” asked Win, not trying overly hard to disguise her amused disbelief at this rather out-of-character proposal: Kate Stewart wasn’t a watcher, she was a doer.

 

“Yes, but the Dropanturi are not toxic.”

 

“Ah…”  Win still hadn’t had a chance to properly understand exactly who or what the Dropanturi were, but she did at least know how to respond to that statement, thanks to Kate’s earlier quiz.  “No, they have a venom sac, making them venomous, although I suppose the venom sac itself is toxic?”

 

“Technically yes, but it doesn’t work like that.  And I would have been quiet if the lecturer hadn’t been an idiot.”  By some unspoken agreement, over lunch they had stuck to a mixture of UNIT gossip, the biological and anatomical quirks and oddities of their alien allies and trying to explain to Maria Walsh precisely what ‘Ossy’ and ‘Ermintrude’ were, while trying to also avoid having to explain why Jess Padwinkski was looking like she wanted the ground to open up under her everytime Flo was mentioned.  “But given that Charlie has forgiven me, and Oscar enjoyed it, why were the Board ringing you up?” Kate was usually insatiably curious, but she was also rather keen to not jeopardise her weekend plans at this late stage. “Or can I continue to not know until Tuesday?”

 

* * *

  
  
  
  


“Merci.”  Accepting her ID when it was handed back to her, Osgood extracted the plastic card from the leather case before putting the bulky ID back in the secure inside zip pocket of her waterproof jacket, alongside her passport.  “Et oui, si vous plait.” Seeing the security guard was now holding out one of the pass holders that she could fix to her trousers, she accepted the holder with relief. While she usually brought her own pass holder, necessary since Central Command still worked on the basis of visible passes at all times, she’d realised in the queue for Swiss immigration that she’d left hers at home.  “Merci monsieur.” Smiling at the security guard, she stepped through the now open entry gate, slipping her pass into the loaned holder as she went. 

 

“Osgood?”

 

Not expecting to hear her name being called out given it was after 7pm on a Friday and this was the more public street level lobby, Osgood fumbled as she was trying to clip it to her belt loop and the pass dropped to the lobby floor with a loud clatter.

 

“Flo!”  Retrieving her pass from the floor, Osgood straightened up just in time to see ‘Ermintrude’ stop a couple of feet from her.  “This is a surprise…” Leaning forwards, Osgood carefully hugged her friend, General Bambera’s partner, in greeting.

 

“Isn’t it?” agreed Flo, wise old eyes sparkling with amused mischief as she tried to put two and two together, noticing the airline ‘cabin approved’ tag still hanging from the strap of her friend’s rucksack and the total absence of more significant luggage.  “Just arrived from London?” Parts of her body may be slowing down due to age and osteoarthritis, but her eyes and mind were as clear and sharp as ever.

 

“Yes.”  Osgood’s nose twitched in the beginnings of a frown as she tried to understand how Flo had worked that out so quickly, only to catch sight of the airline tag on her bag.  “The plane was delayed.” She took the tag off her rucksack and put it tidily in her pocket until she was near a rubbish bin. “Are you waiting for Win?” Osgood couldn’t think of another reason for Flo to be in the ground floor lobby of Central Command, but given how detailed the sketch was on the open page of Flo’s sketchbook, Osgood concluded that the General was late.

 

“We’re going to Le Chat-Botte for dinner…” admitted Flo, her cheeks pinking with shy delight.  

 

“Very nice,” agreed Osgood, nodding enthusiastically, recognising the name of one of Geneva’s finest restaurants, wondering what the special occasion might be for the couple.  “Do you want to wait upstairs?” The third floor reception area was rather less stark than the one they were currently in, with a less obvious security presence and softer lighting.  “This is a bit…” Osgood looked round at the space she rarely spent more than a few seconds in, as her pass enabled her to go straight through to the third floor unescorted, trying to work out how to describe the decor.

 

“Airport security circa mid 2000s?” suggested Flo mischievously, carefully raising her foot to show Osgood her elegant black patent shoe.  “Fortunately shoes could remain on, but liquids were nearly surrendered.”

 

“Liquids?”  Osgood knew there was a no liquids into the building for anyone who was classified as requiring escort, like Flo was, but she was struggling to think what liquids Flo might have with her given her eventual destination.  For a brief moment, she wondered if it had been part of Ermintrude that had transgressed, but Osgood knew she’d not included any hydraulic systems on the scooter, and the power source was a drycell battery.

 

“The nice gentleman and I agreed my foundation was a mousse not a liquid and lipstick was, well, edible not drinkable.  And he had some fascinating suggestions on innovative use of colour...” Flo looked past Osgood in the general direction of the security guards, and in particular the rather large gentleman with the closely shaved head and interesting ear decoration that had checked Osgood’s pass.  “...we agreed I probably couldn’t pull off green or blue lipstick, but I can see how, with his colouring, it would be sensational.”

 

“I see.”  Osgood wasn’t quite sure what else to say about that discovery of Flo’s , though she was struck by something else.  “What’s French for lipstick?” She presumed that the conversation had been in French, as that was the UNIT default when dealing with the Geneva public.

 

“Rouge à lèvres.”  Seeing Osgood was starting to move towards the lifts, Flo carefully coaxed Ermintrude to life and did the mobility scooter equivalent of ‘falling into step’ with her friend, something she didn’t get all that much practice at given she generally was only out and about ‘with’ Win.  “And thank you.” She’d forgotten how stark and soulless the ground floor lobby space was when there was hardly anyone around.

 

“Of course…”  Osgood modified her speed slightly so she was moving at a pace Flo could match without having to fight the scooter’s gearing.  “So green lipstick is  rouge à lèvres vert?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“That’s literally ‘red lips green’...” pondered Osgood, not sure she’d ever needed to mention lipstick before now, pressing her pass against the lift call button while Flo waited a couple of steps back.  She’d never worn it, and Kate only wore it on the odd occasion, usually involving evening wear and an invitation to the Palace.

 

“Personally, I prefer grüner Lippenstift.”  Flo smirked when she saw Osgood’s patient smile.  “And I think that’s a brilliant name for a film villan.”

 

Osgood held the lift doors open so Flo could precede her into the lift.

 

“Hmm…”  Stepping into the lift and holding up her pass to the reader so she could access the buttons, Osgood tried to match Flo’s suggestion.  Catching sight of her grinning friend’s face in the mirrored lift panel, Osgood had a sudden burst of inspiration. “...Zinnoberrot Lippenstift suits you better I think.”

 

There was a long pause as they both watched the lift doors close and felt it start to slowly rise.

 

“How did you know I was wearing Vermillion lipstick?”


	12. Chapter 12

“...just getting into the lift,” promised Win, striding down the corridor, her uniform hat under the arm that was carrying her briefcase while she held her mobile phone to her ear with her other hand.  “So I’ll be on the ground floor in a minute.” Her voice changed to a slightly more ‘strangled’ sound as, needing a finger to press the lift call button with, Win trapped the small mobile phone handset between her ear and shoulder.  “What? Third floor?” Rescuing her phone with her temporarily free hand again, Win stepped back from the lift call button and watched the numbers change as the lift on the far left seemed to set off to collect her. “I’ll come there then.”  Who let you up? Nevermind, see you in a second, it’s here.” Ending the call, knowing from past experience there was insufficient signal in the lift to sustain a conversation with Flo (something to do with needing phone signal to talk to Flo but a different signal to talk to anyone UNIT, though she’d failed to actually remember the distinction), she slid the phone into her coat pocket and rescued her hat, which would have otherwise landed on the carpet.

* * *

 

Osgood, feeling much more comfortable now she’d washed her hands and brushed her hair into some sort of order, opened the door of the Ladies in time to hear the distinctive ‘ping’ of the lifts as one arrived on the floor.  As she stepped into the corridor, she was just in time to catch sight of the braided uniform hat that was held in the hand that was pressing the lift button to send it on its way as the doors closed.

 

Turning away from the lifts, Osgood set off down the long, featureless corridor that had meeting rooms on each side of it, with the occasional black and white framed photograph in between the doors.  This was the way around the building that would see her arrive at the ‘1’ section of the offices on this floor first. 

 

If she’d turned the other way out of the lifts, which was what she usually did, she’d have set off through the open plan offices section (area ‘4’, which was where there were some vacant desks she and others from the Tower’s senior team could use when they were in Geneva and needed somewhere to work), stopped in the Central Command central administrative section offices (area ‘3’, who were continually pestering Fran for Kate, Osgood and others, but mostly Kate to reply to various report requests and the like) to visit the Ladies there and then possibly gone to see Henri, General Bambera’s PA in area ‘2’.

 

Swiping her pass through the reader at the end of the corridor, Osgood let herself into the section of the 6th floor that was usually associated with the most senior members of the UNIT Boards and Leadership.  Area ‘1’ on the 6th floor was the Geneva equivalent of the depths of the Tower where Kate’s office was: it was a part of the Central Command no one went to by accident or uninvited, and it wasn’t a shortcut to anywhere unless you were General Bambera wanting to avoid the hot desks and Administrative teams on the way back to her office, which was supposed to be in section ‘1’ but she’d moved herself into section ‘2’ during the last building reshuffle.  Since no one with enough authority to stop her had noticed until after she’d already moved, she was still in the marginally more accessible section ‘2’, and crucially a couple of doors away from the grumpier members of the Boards, something the General had considered an added perk.

 

As Osgood walked past the deserted offices, a reminder that it was apparently only the alien arrivals that didn’t appear to understand a nine to five Monday to Friday working week, Osgood realised that she didn’t need to work out where office 03 was.  Instead, she instinctively lengthened her stride and headed for the office at the far end of the corridor with the open door and light spilling out through it into the corridor.

* * *

  
  


As she turned the page of the report she was reading, Kate was relieved to see that she had, finally, got to the last section.  She refused to give in to temptation and check her watch again - it wouldn’t improve how she felt about this particular paper as it hadn’t been pleasant reading when she’d started it, and Win’s unexpected visit had only prolonged the torture the paper was causing.  Picking up her pen again, Kate applied herself to the final paragraphs - she’d come this far, she was going to finish it and then forget about it, quickly.

 

Osgood stopped just before she stepped through the open doorway into her girlfriend’s office. A less straightforward person might have tried to kid themselves the pause was because they didn’t want to interrupt Kate’s concentration when she was so near the end of a sizeable report, but Os wasn’t much for subterfuge.  Rather, she’d stopped because for once she’d managed to approach Kate ‘at work’ without being announced by an opening office door or secretary’s announcement. While she often managed to surprise Kate when the blonde was absorbed with garden or kitchen based tasks, Osgood couldn’t remember the last time she’d been able to just watch an oblivious Kate at work.

 

Unaware of Osgood, Kate circled the short three word phrase she concluded was the reason she was finding the sentence problematic and drew a firm line out to the nearby margin, where in her legible but untidily scrawled mixture of printed and cursive letters she suggested the author was rather over-confidently asserting their conclusions.  And then she sighed, realising that the problems only multiplied as she read the remainder of the paragraph - not only was the author over-confident, but the conclusions they had drawn were quite different to the ones Kate had been expecting...and, more fundamentally, firmly past the boundary of ‘challenging’ and well entrenched in the ‘never in a million months of Sundays’ territory.  Drawing two short vertical lines in the left margin level with the edge of the paragraph, she put an asterisk next to them and moved to the bottom of the page where, unfortunately for the author, they had left enough blank space for Kate to summarise her concerns.

 

Extracting her phone from her trouser pocket, Osgood silently unlocked the screen and opened the camera app, smiling as she managed to take the photograph just as Kate punctuated her comment with some brisk underlining and an exclamation point, the marks made by the pen clear from how Kate’s arm moved.  Although she couldn’t see Kate’s face, Os could clearly picture the expression silky blonde hair was hiding, knowing her girlfriend’s tendency to bite her lip and crease her forehead when what she read concerned her.

 

The snap of the cap slotting into its secure place over the nib of Kate’s pen sounded loud in the quiet room and surprised Os, who had been rather too focussed on watching for any little hint or clue as to whether what Kate had read was still troubling her, or whether it was going to be cast from her thoughts as soon as the paper landed in her ‘out tray’.  So intent had her preoccupation been with trying to work out what sort of effect the clearly problematic report might be having on Kate, that Osgood had completely missed her girlfriend putting down her now capped pen and looking up.

 

“Hello you…”  As she dropped the now forgotten report into her out tray, Kate’s smile of relief at finishing the damn thing turned into an involuntary grin at the sight of her girlfriend stood in the doorway, as unexpected though Osgood was in that moment, she was definitely a nice surprise.  Not that Kate reacted all that differently to less pleasant surprises - had she looked up and seen a Cyberman, the grin would have been a fraction smaller and the greeting rather more sarcastic...

 

Realising she still had her phone in her hand with the camera app open, Osgood took another photograph, only this one was best described as cheeky rather than sneaky.

 

“Say cheese?” teased Osgood, knowing her only real defence against a tickle attack was her rain soaked coat.

 

“Sandwiches…” countered Kate, sticking her tongue out at her girlfriend as she moved around the end of her desk, only to groan when she saw Osgood’s finger tap her phone screen again, confirming that particular image had been recorded for posterity.  “...you’re allowed to drip on the carpet…”

 

“What?”  Not following Kate’s change of subject, Osgood repositioned her glasses and looked down at her boots, confirming that she wasn’t actually dripping rainwater on the floor, but that she was also still technically standing in the corridor.  “Oh…” Stepping into her girlfriend’s office, Osgood put her phone in her trouser pocket and went to shut the door behind her, only to pause, wondering if it should be left open.

 

“It was only open because I asked Win not to close it.”  Kate didn’t think there were many people left in the building who knew she once again had an office in Central Command, nevermind actually risk trying to pop by and catch her after 8 on a Friday night, but was happy to not tempt fate.

 

“I thought she was with you…”  Closing the door, Os discovered the coat stand and proceeded to take off her rucksack and jacket.

 

“Oh?  Did you meet her?”  It hadn’t occurred to Kate at first but now she thought about it, assuming Os had been stood in the doorway for a couple of minutes, it would have been possible for Win and her to meet.

“Just missed her, but Flo says hi.”  Coat hung up, Os headed across the office to Kate, no longer interested in talking about Win and Flo.  “Hi…”

 

“Is that from you or Flo?” joked Kate, realising she was still wearing her reading glasses and taking them off, tossing them onto her desk as she continued to meet Os halfway.

 

“That was from Flo…” decided Os as she found herself stopped just in front of Kate.

 

“Ah.”  For a brief second Kate was frustrated with her eyesight, with Osgood being too close to see clearly without her glasses, yet too far away to kiss.  “When did you see Flo?” Kate thought back to her conversation with Win, still unable to spot any hints that suggested she had been about to meet her partner at UNIT, and it was highly improbable that Flo would have been at the airport.

 

“Just now - I escorted her to the third floor.”  Osgood might at some point wonder how it was that Flo was sufficiently recognised by UNIT to be able to wait in the third floor reception on her own, but not able to get there by herself, but those thoughts were a very low priority when she hadn’t seen Kate since the Monday morning Senior Management meeting, but even then she’d been ‘seeing’ Kate on the video conference line as Osgood was on her way to Athens with Maria Walsh and McGillop while Kate was at the Tower.  “Win’s taking her to Le Chat-Botte for dinner.” Osgood tried to keep her tone carefully neutral - she didn’t have anything against going to a very fine restaurant for dinner with Kate, having enjoyed some wonderful meals in very exclusive places over the course of their relationship, but she was rather hoping for something a little more relaxed given the week, weeks, they’d both had.

 

“Fancy.”  Kate had picked up on Osgood’s carefully neutral tone and allowed her own feelings about going somewhere where, as good as the food was, there was an element of ‘being seen’ as well, to come through.  “Explains why Win was making me feel the wrong sort of creased.” Kate didn’t need to look down at herself to be able to 'see’ the creases she knew had formed in her suit trousers, and once she unrolled her shirt sleeves she was resigned to having to wear her jacket no matter what.  Even if she got changed, she’d still feel rather crumpled and creased from the day’s meetings, with the impromptu detour into alien molluscs and fungi one of the relative highlights.

 

“Hmm…”  Taking a half step forwards, Osgood reached out and put her hand on Kate’s hip.  “But I like this sort of creased…” Os had been leaning ever closer to Kate as she’d spoken, but then suddenly stopped and frowned.  “I mean…” The hand that Osgood had not really noticed threading through Kate’s hair fell away as Os went to reposition her glasses while she tried to untangle what she’d meant.

 

“Note to self, don’t bother asking the dry cleaners if they can starch my suits…” teased Kate, intercepting Osgood’s hand before it could reach her glasses, knowing what Os had been trying to say, and liking the idea of her getting closer.

 

“Or your shirts...”  Osgood’s fingers immediately tangled with Kate’s and squeezed.  “Hello…” Os hadn’t realised she had been leaning in to Kate again until she’d stopped, pausing just far enough away that she could see Kate’s mock frown at the latest interruption.  “....just to be clear?”

 

“Clear about what?” Kate tried to keep her frustration in check - she’d waited this long to hold her girlfriend’s hand, she could manage another few seconds, couldn’t she?

 

“This hello’s from me…”

 

“Wha….”  Whatever Kate had been going to ask or say was quickly forgotten, dismissed as not important, because everything else was unimportant as now, right now, Os was kissing her.

 

Os was kissing her.

 

Oh! Os was kissing her...and now, Kate was kissing her back.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should have mentioned a couple of chapters back when I first introduced 'Le Chat-Botte' - it is a real restaurant in Geneva, with the internet helping me to discover it's rather fancy and therefore was the sort of place that might be very popular and not at all easy to get a table at unless you were organised and/or 'known' to the restaurant. Anyone who does know the restaurant will immediately realise I have no idea about it beyond what the internet has shown me - I've got no connection with it and have never been, just borrowed it for the story, promising to return it in excellent condition afterwards (not a glass broken or glass chipped!)

“Is that Ermintrude?”

 

“Mmm?”  Max had been distracted by the roar of a motorbike stopping at the corner, so had not been looking in the same direction as his girlfriend when she’d been talking.  “Ermintrude?” He gave Jess his full attention. “Where?”

 

“There?  By the bar…”  Jess nodded her chin in the direction of the end of the busy bar where, just visible behind an empty chair and next to a coat stand, was a mobility scooter that, despite only hearing descriptions of it, Jess was somehow certain had to be the one Osgood had ‘boffined’ for her boyfriend’s ‘Aunt Flo’.

 

“It’s possible…” Max tried to remember what he could about the scooter that might make it visually distinctive.  “...most of what Os did was with the sensors and controls systems, and I think it was black.” Actually, he couldn’t remember what colour it had been, but black was a good safe guess as pretty much everything made by UNIT (even unofficially, like Ermintrude) ended up being black, or very dark grey.  “But she did make the display a decent size if that helps…”

 

“It’s Ermintrude,” declared Jess with confidence - an early evening diner’s coat was just being returned to them, making it possible for Jess to see the scooter a little bit more clearly.

 

“How can you tell?” Looking over his girlfriend’s head, Max could see the scooter from a different angle, but couldn’t see a display screen.  “It looks like a black scooter to me.”

 

“Look at the seat.”  Jess stepped to the side so that her boyfriend could stand where she’d been stood.

 

“Oh, yeah…”  Grinning at Jess, Max ran his hand over his head before putting it back in his pocket, a move Jess now recognised as being almost identical to Kate’s, though the boss ran her hand through her hair.  “That’s Ermintrude…” There couldn’t be many scooters in the world with a patchwork seat-cover, nevermind one made of, amongst other things, the fabrics Flo had helped the brothers design for the linings of the tailored suits they’d had as their 25th birthday presents from Kate and Osgood.    “Oh, that means….” His grin faltered a bit as the significance of the scooter’s presence sunk in.

 

“Dinner with your Aunts?” Jess, in contrast, was starting to smile, her eyes sparkling at the thought.  She’d survived and even enjoyed lunch with the General, and she had been wanting to meet her boyfriend’s ‘Aunt Flo’ ever since she’d understood that he’d been talking about an actual person, and a fantastic sounding one at that, based on what Soph had told her.  “Charge!”

 

“What?”  Max rested his hand in the small of her back and gently coaxed her forward so they could talk to the restaurant greeter person when he returned: they were perfectly on time for their reservation, a reservation he had already decided was worth a lot several ‘skinny mocha latte with an extra shot’ coffees for Fran, who had made it for him.  

 

“Arsenic and Old Lace?”  Jess saw the genuinely blank look on his face and sighed.  “Have you seen any films apart from Star Wars?”

 

* * *

 

“This office…”  began Osgood, deliberately staying firmly stood by the window: as much as she hadn’t wanted to let go of Kate after that first kiss, it was worth it as neither of them wanted to spend the whole weekend in Central Command.  Therefore, Osgood was standing by the window while Kate finished clearing her desk and packing up. “...it’s got the same view as the one you described your last office here having.”

 

“That’s because it’s the same,” said Kate matter-of-factly as she put her files, now sorted in her best guess order of priority for first thing Tuesday morning, in the middle of her desk, next to the computer keyboard.

 

“Same floor on this side of the building?” asked Osgood, tracking the path of a plane as, its white, red and green lights sparkling in the clear autumn night sky, it headed on its way to wherever it was going.

 

“No…”  Kate set her computer shutting down and turned off the monitor.  “...yes.” Picking up her jacket from the back of her desk chair and putting it on top of the files, she smiled at Os, knowing she was making not much sense.  “Sorry…” Picking up her briefcase, which was for once containing no work as long as she didn’t count her UNIT tablet and phone, she walked round the end of her desk and dumped the bag on a chair.  “It’s got the same view as the one I described last time…” Satisfied she was now ready to leave when the time came, Kate walked up to Os and slipped her hands around her hips, holding her loosely, not quite sure what Osgood’s reaction would be.  “...because it’s the same view, from the same window.”

 

Osgood’s eyebrows twitched as she puzzled her way through exactly what Kate was telling her, picking up on her girlfriend’s slight hesitancy, making Osgood hyper-aware of how she was reacting while she thought things through.

 

“This office now?  Your new office as CSO is the same office you had when you were here before as CSO?”

 

“And before, as Ops-Sci Liaison,” admitted Kate, naming her former role, the one she’d been doing when they’d first started going out.  “This was my office, before…” Kate caught her lip between her teeth and frowned, a new question raising itself. “I don’t know why I never told you…”

 

“Because it wasn’t important?” suggested Osgood, putting her hands on Kate’s hips, no longer frowning.  “Because I didn’t ask?” She leaned forwards and gently nudged Kate’s still slightly wrinkled nose with her own, before pulling back enough to see the tentative smile appearing.  “Because you’ve forgotten that I wasn’t working for UNIT when you worked here then?” she teased, pleased to see an acknowledging smirk from Kate which was extremely tempting to kiss...so she did, fleetingly, resisting the urge to develop the kiss into anything more than a brief brush against her girlfriend’s grin.  “Whose was it? When it wasn’t yours?” Somehow, Osgood had a feeling this was probably critical in explaining why Kate hadn’t ever mentioned it in passing since Osgood joined UNIT.

 

“Claude’s.”  It was just fluke that Kate had been allocated to her old office when she’d finally run out of reasons to stop Win putting in the request for her, but it was a nice fluke.

 

“So he got your office when you moved to London?”  Os was rather impressed by that discovery - she’d always had a sense that Kate had been something pretty special at UNIT in Geneva, and her appointment to Chief Scientific Officer had been something Osgood remembered celebrating… but this was a big office in the heart of the Central Command ‘big wigs’, and Kate had had it since her first days in Geneva…before she was CSO.

 

“Yes.”  Based on the squiggly patterns Os was tracing on her skin, whatever Os was thinking about that was prompting these questions was a good thing, as the patterns were ones Kate had come to recognise and associate with her girlfriend having a ‘happy think’....wait, how on earth had that happened?  Kate could have sworn she’d checked her shirt was firmly tucked in when she’d stood up from her desk…so either Os’ fingers were magic, her shirt was sentient and on Os’ side...or her brain had completely shut down when Os had kissed her again just now, but she could focus and answer the question...question, what was the question?  Oh…

 

Clearing her throat self-consciously, wondering how much of her inner monologue Os had guessed, Kate cast her mind back to her first weeks in Geneva.  “Ops-Sci Liaison was a new position and there wasn’t an allocated desk. This was the easiest way to get an extra office into section 2, as it just needed the door adding.”  Kate nodded to the other wall of the office where, as yet unnoticed by Osgood, was another door. “That one was added and through it was where Jacques’ desk was,” Jacques had been her assistant for the entire time she’d been in Geneva and, had initially at least, transferred to the Tower to be Kate’s assistant as Greyhound One.  Jacques was someone Osgood had got to know quite well over the years, even before she worked for UNIT, with him taking all sorts of messages for her and being the one she needed to get on side when she’d been trying to plan to surprise Kate on occasion. “But I have to interview for a new assistant this time…” 

 

Kate did not enjoy interviewing, and tried to avoid it whenever possible, usually by just meeting final candidates that others had already decided on.  It was a very successful strategy for scientists - she liked to know who they were hiring, but was of the opinion that it was up to the senior specialists to decide who would be the best fits in their respective labs, not her.  From her perspective, she could put up with pretty much anyone in a crisis or a committee if they were technically sound, and so it was more important that the scientists working alongside each other on a daily basis took the important decisions about who they wanted.  But she didn’t have much choice when it came to her own assistants, although fortunately Fran had been a great success and meant she’d managed to avoid any interviewing for a few years now.

 

“Why?”  Osgood remembered Kate’s relief that Jacques had ‘come with the office’ and agreed to transfer to the Tower with her, and remembered her struggles to pick someone to succeed him when he left UNIT a few months later and relocated to New York with his banker boyfriend.  She deliberately didn’t think about what it must have been like when Kate then had to interview again when that assistant hadn’t worked out, as Fran had been appointed when Osgood was… elsewhere.

 

“Why do I need to interview?  Or why do I need a new assistant?”  Kate hadn’t been following Osgood’s thought process but had been remembering the agony of trying to interview without having Os around to talk to.  All things considered, Fran really was a miracle as far as Kate was concerned.

 

“Why should you be the one interviewing?”  Even if she didn’t know how much of a struggle her girlfriend found interviewing, Osgood wasn’t seeing why Kate was resigned to the task when it was clearly, as far as Os could tell, not the right option.

 

“Who else can do it?  It’s my assistant...”

 

“Fran and Henri.”  Osgood smirked at the look on Kate’s face, which was a mixture of total surprise and shock, combined with optimism but skepticism.  “And yes, it’s a serious suggestion.” So serious in fact, that she stopped tracing patterns on Kate’s back, which now Os thought about it, was probably explaining some of Kate’s expression.

 

“How?”  

 

“Fran’s got to work with them more than you, and I think Henri will insist on adopting them…”  Henri was General Bambera’s long-standing assistant who had taken it upon himself to keep an eye on Kate’s Geneva schedule and generally be Fran’s Geneva eyes and ears whenever Kate was there.  In exchange, Fran did the same for him when Win Bambera was in London, and both covered for the other during holidays. Somehow, despite trying other more geographically straightforward solutions, there was so much overlap between General Bambera’s responsibilities and Kate’s, especially when one of them actually attempted going on leave for more than a day or so, that this had become the best solution.  “And between the two of them, they have a fairly good idea of who would be the wrong person for you...mmph!” 

 

Osgood hadn’t been expecting the sudden kiss, but only took a split second to respond and kiss Kate back, with much more than a peck this time....

 

* * *

  
  


“Is that Max?” Flo put her menu to one side and, seeing she had her partner’s attention, nodded in the direction of the restaurant entrance.  “With a pretty blonde?”

 

“Yes…”  Max was not hard to spot, standing a good few inches taller than anyone in his immediate vicinity, and thanks to her unexpected lunch, Win knew about the ‘pretty blonde’.  “...and that’s Jess Padwinkski, his girlfriend.”

 

“Oh, the glowing bouncer?”

 

“An exobiologist who you didn’t meet when we were in London for Ossy because she was here as a substitute for Osgood.”  Win took a sip of her whiskey, knowing she was probably going to get pinched for this but deciding it was worth it. “And one of her many areas of interest is iridescent collagens.”

 

“Iridescent col-a-whats?”

 

“Glowy bouncy protein things.”  Win put down her whiskey. “Ow!”  As expected, she felt Flo’s expert pinch to her thigh, their corner table putting said thigh (which wasn’t quite as firmly muscled as it had been when she was ‘earning’ pinches more frequently) in prime pinching range.  “I had lunch with her.”

 

Flo’s eyebrow raised, eloquent as ever.

 

“It’s a long story that I was going to tell you properly through dinner…” began Win, seeing Max and Jess were being led through the busy restaurant to, if her tactical training was up to scratch, a table in their general area but out of direct eavesdropping range.  “But the short version is blame Kate!”

 

“I….”  Flo had been about to ask Win what she meant by that, only to see Max and Jess were now about to walk right by their table.  “...Max! Darling boy!”

 

“Aunt Flo…”  Max stopped and immediately bent down to kiss her on the cheek, holding Jess’s hand so she didn’t disappear.  Beyond them, the restaurant waiter who had been tasked with leading them to their table found himself hovering, near enough to their table that he could put down the menus in their places but still too far away to actually feel like he could leave them to find their own seats.  Plus, these were the corner tables that, unofficially, on a Friday night could generally only be reserved by people who were ‘known’ to the restaurant...so he hovered, intrigued to see the four interact: he hadn’t recognised the younger couple he was trying to seat, but the older ladies were well known to the management and the younger couple’s confirmation details were impeccable and more than entitled to a corner table.  “...can I introduce my girlfriend?”

 

“Jess dear!”  Using Max’s arm for assistance, Flo stood up so she could greet the blonde scientist properly.  “Win was just about to tell me all about your lunch…”

 

“Lunch?”  Max’s head swiveled from Jess to his Aunt Win who shrugged in her familiar ‘don’t look at me’ gesture that was exclusively used in ‘Aunt Win’ conversations rather than ‘General Bambera’ moments.  It usually came with the unspoken ‘blame your mother’, which considering she’d been in Geneva this week, Max was more than happy to assume.

 

“Where did Kate take you?” asked Flo, trying to work out whether Max knew Osgood was in Geneva as clearly Win hadn’t.

 

“Mrs Woon’s, it’s…” 

 

“Mum took you to Mrs Woon’s?”  Max looked from Jess to Win, realising from how they’d started this conversation that she must have also been at the lunch.  “But that’s…” Suddenly Max clamped his mouth shut, not wanting to finish that thought.

 

“A lovely treat for you my dear,” said Flo, smiling warmly at Jess, suddenly wondering if she’d guessed correctly.  “But very different to the dinner you’re about to have. Are you staying in Geneva for the weekend?”

 

“Yes.”  Not sure why her boyfriend was being weird, Jess took over the conversation.  “I wanted to play tourist, so Max is showing me around a bit...not sure where exactly though..”  Jess’ cheeks pinked slightly as she looked at him, wondering if he’d let something slip about exactly what he had planned for the weekend now she had his ‘Aunts’ as back-up.  “It’s mostly a surprise…”

 

“Mostly?” asked Win, having stood up when Flo did, suddenly remembering something from that night at the Savoy when Jess had been established as a ‘glowy bouncer’.  “What has he told you?”

 

“That tomorrow includes a picnic, a boat and a fairytale, not necessarily in that order.” 

 

It was Max’s turn to blush when he saw the knowing smiles from his Aunts, realising also that they knew exactly what he’d planned - clearly they’d got the story from his Mum and Os at some point too.

 

“You’re going to have a lovely day my dear…” declared Flo, reaching out and giving Jess’ hand a squeeze before using Max’s assisting arm to carefully sit down in her chair again.  “...and I look forward to hearing all about it when we next see each other.” Flo put her napkin back in her lap, deciding it was past time now that these ‘young people’ got on with their romantic evening.  “I think we’re going to be great friends.” Even if she hadn’t seen something in the way Max was behaving, or heard Kate’s suspicions and quiet hopes for the pair, Flo had decided that if Max had planned on the trip to Chillon tomorrow, then Max had decided Jess was ‘the one’.

 

“Have a lovely evening, and weekend,” agreed Win, not disagreeing with Flo’s assertion, having formed her own conclusion that Flo would take to Jess just as she’d taken to Soph, Gordy’s girlfriend.  “Will I be seeing you in class on Monday morning Max?”

 

“Yes Aunt Win.”  Max was currently in the middle of a short course of tactical and leadership training that saw him in Geneva for lectures and seminars more often than either Osgood or Kate at the moment.  “1000 I believe.”

 

“I look forward to it, you can buy me a coffee at 0930.”  Smiling at them both, she gave him a lightning fast wink so he knew she was still very firmly in ‘Aunt Win’ territory, and clearly anticipating Flo wanting a weekend gossip update now she knew they’d be seeing each other on Monday.  “Now, go and enjoy yourselves…”

 

Together, Win and Flo watched as the confused waiter finally was able to get his evening back on track by seating Max and Jess at their table, handing out the menus and doing the ‘welcome’ speech explaining all about what they were about to read when they looked at the menu.  

 

“Remind you of anyone?” asked Flo, putting her napkin back in her lap and looking at her partner who, like Max, was sitting neatly pressed with buttons gleaming and nothing out of place.  There were many risks associated with falling in love with a soldier, but the risks also brought unique rewards, and admiring Win in her uniform was one that Flo had long enjoyed.

 

“You were never that blonde…” teased Win, taking hold of Flo’s hand that, despite now being rather stiff with arthritis, still fit perfectly in hers.

 

“You were never that tall…” countered Flo, doing the best she could in terms of an affectionate squeeze.  “...but still as handsome…”

 

“I thought I was dashing?”

 

“Colonels dash…” Flo nodded in the direction of Max and Jess.  “...and Captains, but Generals are devastatingly handsome.” Flo used her other hand to reopen her menu, starting to feel hungry again.  “And Osgood thinks all the braid would make you less aerodynamic, which doesn’t help with dashing...” Flo looked at Win with a sparkling smile, full of mischief and joy.

 

“When were you talking to Osgood about my braid?”  Anyone else making that observation would have seen Win’s hackles rise at the implied criticism of her slightly larger uniform size compared to when she’d first joined the Army, but with Osgood, it would have been exactly what she’d said it was, an observation about the accumulated extra bits and pieces augmenting her basic uniform now she was a General.  It also made the dry cleaning bill more. “And why was Osgood thinking about my braid?”

 

“Not your braid darling, braid in general…”  Flo paused, considering what she’d just said.  “...on Generals I mean.” Seeing Win still look a little uncertain, Flo had her own moment of doubt.  “Baby Brig is a sort of General, isn’t she?” Flo had, despite being in love with a General for enough years that she’d fallen in love with a Colonel, never really grasped what the military hierarchies were, and the different ways a ‘Brigadier General’ could be addressed was well beyond Flo’s grasp or interest.

 

“Osgood had been thinking about Kate?”

 

“I’m not sharing you!!”  Laughing, Flo sat back in her chair and picked up her menu, hoping she didn’t have to redo her make-up as the ladies was a relatively long way from the table and the lighting was romantic rather than helpful.  

 

“Mesdames…”

 

Their moment was carefully interrupted by the restaurant manager, wondering if everything was satisfactory and would they like to order, with a small hint that if Madame Florence wished to have her usual scallops then chef would like to put it  one side for her as they were down to the last couple of portions.

 

“Ah, oui…”  Scallops…. If she was having scallops as a main, what did she want for a starter?  

 

“Flo?”

 

“Mmm?”

 

“Please don’t order the mushrooms…”

 

* * *

  
  


“Not that I’m complaining…” mumbled Osgood, her lips feeling a bit dry and puffy - clearly out of practice it seemed at being kissed almost senseless, as she repositioned her glasses and checked her bowtie was level, “...but what was that for?”

 

“Being brilliant.”  Kate leaned in and gently kissed Os on the lips, taking exaggerated care to not disturb her girlfriend’s glasses as she did so.  “My brilliant Os…” Another kiss, though this one landed on Os’ jaw, encouraging Osgood to turn her head slightly, making it possible for Kate to continue on her teasing path.

 

“Silly idiotic thing…” Osgood knew what Kate was trying to do, and was torn between letting her girlfriend continue with her persuasion plan or telling Kate she wasn’t in trouble, and therefore didn’t need to be trying to persuade her.. 

 

“Mmm…”  Kate’s ready agreement, timed it seemed to coincide with her lips reaching Os’ earlobe and her fingers finally finding a weak point in Osgood’s tidily tucked in shirt, nearly undid Os completely, but the sudden coolness of the window pane served as a reminder that they had not yet properly started their weekend, helping Os to decide what to do.

 

“Daft fool…”  With determination that was often overlooked by others, Os managed to gather her rapidly disappearing composure and place her hand firmly over Kate’s far too talented lips.  “I still love you even though you want to call her now…”

 

“Hmm?”  Unable to properly defend herself, with Os’ hand firmly over her mouth still, Kate tried to look innocent, though the cheeky lick she gave to Osgood’s palm rather undid any success she might have been having.

 

“Call her…” repeated Os, grinning as she realised she could reach into Kate’s trouser pocket and extract her phone while keeping her other hand gently covering Kate’s mouth, not exactly stopping the kissing, but keeping it contained to a part of her that didn’t make her brain go fuzzy.  Phone extracted, and realising that without her glasses, Kate would probably find an excuse to stay precisely where she was, Osgood unlocked the phone and hit the relevant speed dial for Fran’s mobile. “It’s dialing…” she added, smirking as she removed her hand finally and held the phone out for Kate to take, just in time to hear Fran’s greeting.

 

“Mmm…” Clearing her throat as she held the phone to her ear, Kate tried to glare at Os but suspected from the quiet chuckle she’d probably just made herself go cross-eyed.  “Sorry to call you this late Fran…” began Kate, realising she didn’t actually know what time it was now - having kept track of the agonisingly slow progress that the minute hand had made on her watch for most of the afternoon, she’d taken her watch off just before Win had appeared and put it in her jacket pocket, but now she had no idea what the time was, other than it had to be earlier than 8.45pm in Geneva because her desk phone hadn’t rung.  “...but I wanted to catch you before you started planning for next week….” Kate was rather conscious that she was stood almost on top of Osgood, which was rather nice when they’d been doing what they’d been doing, but was a bit too close now they weren’t. 

 

As Kate took a step back, intending to give Os some quite literal breathing space, Osgood reached out and caught hold of the pale blue shirt that, while lovely, wasn’t Osgood’s all-time favourite.  It did however have buttons that were spaced just wide enough to create gaps between them that Os could get her fingers through, signalling to Kate that she really didn’t need to step backwards. In fact, now she’d got Kate stood by the window, her phone in her left hand, Os could swop leaning against the window for leaning against her girlfriend who was warmer and softer.

 

“....how do you feel about interviewing?” continued Kate, leaning against the window once she realised that Os was wanting to use her as a pillar, a duty Kate was all too willing to fulfil even before she felt Os’ arm wrap around her waist as her own free arm settled around her girlfriend.  “On your own, or with Henri, whatever you think is best…” continued Kate, her body relaxing as her thoughts sharpened, the brilliance of Osgood’s suggestion becoming more and more apparent as she talked it through with Fran. “It was pointed out to me that I’m not the one this new person has to be a good fit with, but you…”


	14. Chapter 14

“Are you sure?”  Fran wasn’t sure if she was secretly hoping Kate had or hadn’t been serious about her suggestion - if she was honest, interviewing wasn’t something that Fran had very much experience with, but she did like the idea of being able to influence who would end up as Kate’s Geneva PA.  Keeping track of Kate Stewart and everything that UNIT and Whitehall threw at her was quite challenging when Fran was confident of seeing Kate at least once a day to make sure nothing new had snuck into the agenda without Fran spotting it, but it acquired a whole new complexity when Kate was in Geneva, unsupervised.  “I mean…” Flustered, Fran tried to qualify what she’d said when she spotted that she might have sounded like she was doubting her boss which she generally considered to be a career limiting strategy and tried to avoid.

 

“You mean do I really believe you will select a better candidate to keep me in check when I’m out here on a more routine basis than if I try and find one on my own?  Absolutely.” Kate squeezed Osgood’s shoulder in acknowledgment that she’d felt her girlfriend’s quiet hum of agreement. “And I’m not just saying this because it’s Osgood’s idea…” she joked, ending with a cough of surprise when Os poked her in the stomach, a pointed reminder as to where exactly her girlfriend’s fingers had got to, and one that did see Kate look down and double check that her shirt was still buttoned and mostly tucked in.  “I am not prepared to be in Geneva more than I need to be, which will be less than many want me to be. I want someone here who understands that you’re the boss and works well with you, whether I’m here or not.” Kate paused, instinctively allowing Fran a chance to signal if she needed more detail about how Kate was envisioning the future, but instead of Fran speaking, the quiet was shattered by her desk phone ringing.

 

“Do you want me to…?” whispered Osgood, looking at Kate through her slightly askew glasses, for once happy to tolerate their imperfect positioning as the distraction was inconsequential compared to the calming sense of peace she could find in Kate’s arms.

 

“Please…”  Letting go of Os, Kate realised what time it must be.  “...it’s for you anyway.”

 

“I’m stopping you have your weekend,” declared Fran, hearing the telephone ring in the background and picking up enough of the whispered conversation to remember that Osgood had by now made it to Geneva and this was their anniversary.  “Happy anniversary by the way.”

 

“It’s fine…”  Kate had dismissed Fran’s concern before registering what else she’d said.  “...oh, thank you… you can let me know on Tuesday if you’d rather, about the interviewing.”

 

“No need, I mean thank you, I have no idea if I’m any good at interviewing, but I’d like to try and you’re right.”

 

“You mean Osgood’s right,” joked Kate, relieved that Fran was prepared to do the interviewing because, since Osgood had pointed out what was now blindingly obvious to her, Kate really couldn’t think of a better way of hiring a new and ultimately successful PA than asking Fran to take the lead.  “I won’t be in the least offended…” continued Kate, turning to watch as Osgood headed over to her ringing desk phone and answered it. “...she usually is.”

 

“Are Greyhounds allowed to be described as sweet?”  Fran tried very hard to not just blurt out what she was thinking, and most of the time managed to curb any tendencies she might otherwise have, but every now and then she failed to catch herself in time.  “Oh, I’m…”

 

“Promising not to mention this on Tuesday morning…” joked Kate, knowing she was being atypical compared to her ‘Greyhound’ persona but right now, and for the first time in a while, or at least long enough that she couldn’t actually work out quite how long it was, she wasn’t actually feeling remotely ‘Greyhound’-like.

 

“Ah, that reminds me….”  Wincing, not really wanting to keep any of them from their Friday nights and weekend plans for any longer, Fran decided she probably did need to mention something she’d not exactly promised to not mention, since she was talking to Kate.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Captain Stewart...Max...I mean…”

 

“My son?  What did he persuade you to do and did you set your price high enough?”  Kate had learned to recognise that when Fran was struggling to refer to Max as ‘Captain Stewart’ it normally meant he was doing something Fran thought Kate needed to be aware of as ‘Mum’ rather than in any of her other capacities.

 

“A reservation for two about now at Le Chat-Botte, for him and Jess.  And he pre-paid with a skinny mocha latte.”

 

“Extra shot I hope?”  Kate was very aware of her PA’s preferred coffee indulgence, self-aware enough to know she caused more than enough headaches for Fran on a daily basis to warrant a regular at-desk delivery, but Tower security was rather incompatible with courier delivery of hot liquids, so she’d invested in a decent ‘fancy’ coffee machine for the nearest kitchen point to her office and tried to only cause out and out terrestrial chaos when she knew she could detour (usually with Jenkins’ help, secured with a promise of a hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and cinnamon) to buy a coffee concoction for Fran.

 

“Yes, and a biscotti.”  Those were one of Kate’s indulgences, especially if bought from the place around the corner from the Tower, and since she’d been introduced to them, were becoming one of Fran’s favourites also.  “I hope that doesn’t spoil your plans.” Fran for once didn’t know what Kate had organised, and had it not been for Osgood’s comment earlier, wouldn’t have known that there were any plans, Kate having sorted everything out for herself when she’d found a moment.  “Max being in Geneva I mean.”

 

“Good boy..”  Kate’s moment of maternal pride at Max’s half decent manners was short lived as she thought of something else.  “...and no, but he might not be so lucky…” Kate saw Osgood’s slightly bemused frown of a puzzle unsolved as she returned the phone to Kate’s desk, the short phone call leaving the scientist with more questions than answers, questions Kate was now eager to answer.  “He’s on a double date with General Bambera.”

 

“Oh.”  Fran had shut down her computer while she’d been on the phone to Kate, ready to leave to meet her husband for their trip up the Shard to take in the London skyline at night, something they’d been promising themselves to do since  _ their  _ anniversary in the spring, but the thought of the legendary General also having dinner (no doubt booked for her by Henri, Fran would have to compare notes with him on Tuesday) in the same restaurant.

 

“Speaking of dates, enjoy the Shard Fran, thank you for everything and have a great weekend…”  Kate listened as Fran said her goodbyes, watching Osgood’s expressions as she attempted to put together what their weekend plans might be based on what the phone call had told her.  Putting her mobile back in her pocket, Kate leaned against the window and just enjoyed her view, both hands in her trouser pockets.

 

“What?”  Out of reflex habit, Osgood felt her bowtie and collar to make sure everything was neat and tidy, earning her a groan from Kate as she automatically continued and retucked her shirt.

 

“Fran’s just told me Max is also having dinner at Le Chat-Botte.  And I’d only just got you untucked.”

 

“Interesting, but not what you were thinking about.”  Osgood repositioned her glasses and stayed by Kate’s desk, not the only one to be currently enjoying the view.  It was, however, taking rather a lot of self-control to stay away from Kate given what she’d just learned from the phone call, though knowing that they had to be ready to leave in six minutes did help her find some willpower.  

 

“No.”  Kate had picked up on Osgood’s resolve, her girlfriend accidentally stood in what was clearly the optimum focal distance for her without her glasses, which was also rather infuriatingly out of reach.  “You’ve got your ‘behave’ look in place. Am I in trouble?”

 

“Only if you keep looking at me like that…”  Osgood cleared her throat and repositioned her glasses.  “Helicopter to the hotel?”

 

“There are roadworks?” It was a weak excuse, one that Kate knew Os would see through even without her glasses, but the ‘truth’ would definitely get her in ‘trouble’ and they didn’t have time for that just now.

 

“Flight time confirmed at 20 minutes…” Osgood caught her lip between her teeth as she did some arithmetic, though it was more of an approximation rather than an accurate calculation as she didn’t know a number of variables, including the cruising speed of the helicopter and direction of flight, not to mention not knowing much about the distribution of helipads in Geneva or the surrounding Cantons and even less about their distribution in neighbouring France.

 

“Now who’s in trouble…” muttered Kate, pushing herself away from the window and going to put on her jacket, deciding she wasn’t going to be wearing it long enough to worry about redoing her shirt cuffs, but she probably did need to check that her shirt tails weren’t hanging below her jacket.

 

“Mmm?”  Os had still been puzzling her way through her self-set puzzle, trying to narrow down where they might be headed, but seeing Kate getting ready to leave, went to retrieve her drier coat from where she’d hung it up.  “Oh and it’s stopped raining, cleared into a nice evening apparently.” It was hard to tell from the office, but it was good to know that they wouldn’t be soaked by the rain being whipped about in all directions by the helicopter rotorwash.  “Almost a full moon too.” That last fact hadn’t been mentioned by Ops, but was just something Osgood knew.

 

“I know…”  Kate eased her hair out from under her jacket collar and therefore completely missed Osgood’s surprise at this - just as it was something Osgood knew, it was usually something Kate was oblivious to. Checking her pockets now contained everything she was expecting them to, Kate double checked the surface of her desk to make sure she had everything she wanted and, more importantly, had left behind everything else.

 

“Here…”  Osgood, now wearing her own coat, stood behind Kate, holding out her raincoat for her to slip her arms into.

 

“Thanks…”  Kate smiled when, coat settling on her shoulders, she felt Os’ arms slip around her waist and her girlfriend’s chin rest lightly on her shoulder.  “Mmm, we need to go…” she reminded Os, although it was a rather feeble protest as she leaned back into the embrace.

 

“We are…” agreed Os, kissing Kate’s neck before letting her arms drop, recognising the sensible plan albeit with some reluctance, although at least wherever they were going was only 20 minutes or so away, assuming the helicopter was the first and final stage of their journey.  She was going to look for their luggage but remembered something else the Duty Officer had said. “...our bags are already sorted?”

 

“Ops collected them earlier…”  Kate gave her desk a final glance to make sure there wasn’t anything left lying about that needed putting somewhere more organised given neither she nor Fran would be in again until Tuesday.  “...and no doubt Concierge on arrival, so we can’t compete over who does the carrying this time…” 

 

“This time?”  Osgood settled her rucksack on her shoulders and stepped out into the hallway, preparing to retrace her steps to the lifts, puzzling her way through the two hints she felt she’d just been given. “So we’ve been to this hotel that has a helipad before?”

 

“Yes, but not to stay…”  Kate turned her office light out and fell into step with Os.  “...and I only remembered that this morning. We had a coffee and used the loos.”  Kate by then also had a broken finger, meaning Os had been doing all the driving rather than them taking it in turns, but Kate didn’t want to mention that until she was better able to cope with Os having an attack of the huffs..

 

“We did?”  Osgood edited her mental map of possible places they could be going to and eliminated neighbouring France and Italy, not recalling any weekend excursions by car into either country.  “That narrows the possibilities…were the boys with us? Or your father?”

 

“No, and no…”  Approaching the lifts, Kate headed to the call buttons, lightly tapping the up button and then walking over to stand next to the still puzzling Osgood.  “...we stopped then because it was convenient, and I never actually thought I’d get this far without you knowing where we’re going...” admitted Kate honestly - usually her plans only remained a surprise to Osgood if she employed a cover-story like their trip to Chelsea Flower Show being as guests of Gordy rather than the real reason of ‘meeting’ Ossy.  Or, to put it another way, Kate was now nervous in case Osgood didn’t like the ‘surprise’ and was rather regretting her girlfriend not having more of an idea already, just in case.

 

“Does it involve people leaping out and shouting at me?” asked Osgood practically, recalling the one and only time Kate had allowed Osgood’s family to talk her into helping them throw a classic Osgood family surprise party for her.

 

“If it does, I’m complaining to the management,” grumbled Kate, seeing the far lift was the one that was going to arrive for them.  “Or asking you what else you thought might happen at a Charlie Chaplin museum…” She had no idea if there was any actual leaping and shouting involving visitors at that particular museum, but it seemed probable given what she knew of his films’ slapstick element.

 

“Good point.”  Osgood accepted Kate’s observations with ease, appreciating the logic behind them before she’d really registered what else was significant about Kate’s highly specific random suggestion.  “Wait…” 

 

Obediently, Kate stopped mid step, not caring that she had one foot in the lift and had to prepare to hold the lift doors open by blocking the door sensor with her hand, only to be gently collided with as Osgood kept going,

 

“Sorry…” Grinning sheepishly when she realised her girlfriend’s understandably literal interpretation of her statement, Os waited until they were both in the lift and the doors were closing before she continued talking.  “We’re going to Corsier-sur-Vevey?” she asked, remembering the name of the village that the actor had lived in in the final decades of his life, and which was now home to a museum. She could remember the name of the village because she’d read about Chaplin, both before and since his home had been turned into a museum, but she couldn’t remember going there.  Nor, if she was honest, could she work out why Kate would have picked it, but she was honest enough with herself to admit that she didn’t really care where they stayed as long as it was just Kate and her.

 

“Montreaux…”  The village now synonymous with Chaplin was only a few kilometres from where they were actually staying, which was a resort town on the Lake, which in turn was only a couple of kilometres from somewhere that would always be a very special place for both of them, though one they hadn’t yet seen by moonlight.  “...and here…” Kate pulled one of Os’ inhalers out of her coat pocket and held it out for her, knowing that the helicopter fuel and downdraught wouldn’t be very kind to Osgood’s lungs, but she hoped Os would think it was worth it once they’d arrived in their room. “I hope the moonlight makes it worth it.”

 

Stepping forwards, Osgood took the inhaler and shook it, her eyes locked with Kate’s.  “You make it worth it….” In a single smooth movement honed with years of practice and instinctive use under all manner of circumstances, Osgood had uncapped the inhaler and put it to her lips, the hiss of the aerosol sounding loud in the quiet lift car.  Holding her breath in her lungs was automatic as she took the inhaler from her mouth, recapped it and put it in her coat pocket before finally exhaling, the medicine having had a chance to take effect. “...moonlight’s a bonus…” 


	15. Chapter 15

“Tea for them?” asked Osgood, nudging Kate with her shoulder to distract her from whatever she’d drifted off into - despite only being given a few minutes warning, they’d still managed to get to the little bus shelter type construction on the roof that served as the helipad’s ‘waiting room’ before the helicopter. 

 

“Hmm?”  Blinking, Kate looked at Osgood with an apologetic smile.  “Sorry, miles away.” Kate recognised the expression on Os’ face, it was a classic unspoken ‘daft fool’ expression, and prompted Kate to fill in the blanks and work out what she’d missed, which was probably Os offering a hug or mug of tea for her thoughts, inflation having done for the more traditional ‘penny’ some years ago as far as Osgood was concerned.  “Tea’s not necessary…” The grin and accompanying head bob that was almost but not quite a nod told Kate she’d guessed correctly. “...I was just remembering the first time I came up here…”

 

“Oh?”  Osgood couldn’t remember the first time she’d used the Central Command Helipad particularly, but that would be because it was wrapped up as part of a larger memory she was probably trying to forget: as a general rule, she usually only found herself travelling by helicopter in the middle of a crisis when transportation was the least of her worries.  The other times generally involved Kate, and well, compared to her girlfriend, she’d always found helicopters rather uninteresting once she’d understood how they worked. “What was the occasion?”

 

“Roadworks…hey!”  Her girlfriend’s thump had been well aimed and mostly entirely playful, so Kate’s rubbing of her upper arm was exaggerated for dramatic effect.  “I’m serious...there were horrific roadworks here in 2004, and Win was always late as a result of them.”

* * *

 

_ “Ready Kate?” asked General Winifred Bambera, looking every inch the General she was as she stood in the doorway of Kate’s office, every button shining and every crease razor sharp. _

 

_ “Oh, yes General!” Not realising quite how long she’d taken to draft her text message, Kate quickly scanned the few words on the small screen and pressed send as she leapt to her feet, glad that the only other thing she had to do to be properly ‘ready’ was put on her raincoat and remember to pick up her umbrella. _

 

_ “Relax Kate.”  In a very un-General like behaviour, Win leaned against the doorframe and smiled at the blonde’s hasty movements.  “You’re allowed a whole two minutes to get organised.” _

 

_ “Thanks, but I don’t need two,” declared Kate, flicking her hair out from underneath her raincoat collar with one hand whilst she dropped her mobile phone into her coat pocket with the other.  Grabbing the umbrella from where it was resting against the side of her desk, she headed over to the doorway where, just outside of Win’s line of vision was her briefcase and small wheeled suitcase.  “Ready.”  _

 

_ “Expecting a monsoon?” asked Win as she turned around and started to walk down the corridor, collecting her own briefcase and suitcase combination from where she’d left it by Jacques’ desk when she’d arrived to let Kate know she was ready. _

 

_ “What?”  Not expecting the question, it took Kate a moment to work out what Win was talking about, although she could cover her confusion by taking a moment to wish her assistant a good weekend and confirm to the generally unflappable Jacques that yes, she had packed the latest draft of the report on Alien visitor permit protocols and he could assure anyone and everyone that she would have read it by Monday.  Lengthening her stride in order to catch Win up, Kate instinctively tucked her umbrella under her arm so she still had a hand free despite wheeling her suitcase. “Oh, my umbrella!” Smiling sheepishly, Kate glanced down at the smooth polished wooden handle. “I never manage to get the small ones to fold up after I’ve used them and it takes me so long to open them up when it does rain that I generally don’t bother.  This was my Christmas present from Dad - apparently UNIT doesn’t employ drowned rats.” The arrival of the lift interrupted their conversation as, no matter how sophisticated the suitcase manufacturer or well maintained the lift, it was a proven fact that no suitcase would wheel smoothly and easily into a lift. “We’re going to the roof?” _

 

_ “Helicopter to the airport.  It’s gridlocked out there.” Win was still smarting at how long it had taken her to ‘nip’ home to get her overnight bag, not liking how much of the morning had been lost to a traffic jam.  “Didn’t you notice?” The roadworks outside the UNIT headquarters had been causing chaos for weeks, and this morning’s jams had been extra bad due to a broken down lorry somewhere in the city. _

 

_ “The ‘perk’ of not yet finding somewhere to live,” explained Kate, glossing over the fact that she hadn’t really been in a position to move out of her current flat until her divorce had completed and she was legally ‘Kate Lethbridge-Stewart’ once more.  “So I’m still walking everywhere.”  _

 

_ There was a lot to be said for the UNIT flat she had been living in for the last few months, with its fabulous view of the lake and convenient location within walking distance of the office, but it was rather sterile, with a constant flux of neighbours as UNIT staff on temporary secondment to Geneva came and went.  She’d presumed that, once her divorce was complete and all her affairs in England were sorted through, she’d have started looking for a flat to rent that she could really feel was ‘hers’. In fact, she’d half thought that she’d have asked Osgood to help her explore a couple of possible areas of the city with her last Sunday, before her friend had taken the late evening flight back to London, but that was before a picnic by the Lake and a Sunday spent exploring a number of areas…. of Osgood. _

 

_ Clearing her throat, Kate hoped that if Win had noticed any colouring of her cheeks she’d presume it was due to a cough and took a moment to concentrate on double checking that she still had her various possessions distributed through her jacket and raincoat pockets. _

 

_ “Of course.”  Oblivious to Kate’s nerves, Win was still working through her frustration from the roadworks.  “I wouldn’t rush to move if I were you, the traffic’s not going to improve before Christmas.” Uncertain how to reply, Kate was saved by the ‘ding’ of the lift announcing their arrival at roof level where, sure enough, there was the anonymous black helicopter that the likes of General Bambera could call upon.  “Do you think Flo would let me have a helipad installed on the lawn?” _

* * *

 

“...with the General?  But that means…” Osgood thought back to the early months of Kate’s time in Geneva, when Kate had been living in that flat within walking distance of UNIT and definitely didn’t get involved in any alien adventures.  She did, however, start to do a fair bit of ‘commuting’ to London on behalf of UNIT, although Os could only remember one trip that Kate had mentioned involved both the General and a helicopter. “... _ that _ weekend?” she asked, her cheeks pinking at the memories she was suddenly ‘seeing’, which included a lot of her, at that time, still very new girlfriend.

* * *

  
  


_ “....at least, that’s what I would do….” Osgood repositioned her glasses as she straightened up, no longer needing to peer at the data on her colleague’s computer screen, “....if it were up to me.” _

 

_ “Thanks Os…good.  Sorry.” He blushed and moved his computer mouse so that the screen lock didn’t activate.  “Osgood. Thank you.” Nerves finally under control, he looked up at her, not needing to have been looking at her to know that when he’d paused after the first syllable of her name she’d gone still.  Her loathing of any sort of abbreviation or modification of her name was legendary - she was ‘Osgood, just Osgood’ and after working at the National Physics Laboratory for just over a year, everyone including the Director knew it. _

 

_ “No problem.”  Smiling, Osgood picked up her mug, preparing to continue back to her lab.  “Good luck, however you approach it.” _

 

_ “I’m going to do it your way.”  He swallowed nervously, cross with himself that she had this effect on him - he didn’t normally worry about talking to girls, but then he didn’t know many girls who were scientists of Osgood’s calibre.  “Co-author? If there’s a paper.” _

 

_ “That’s not necessary…” began Osgood, unaware of the effect she was having on the department’s newest post-doc appointment, being instead momentarily distracted by a quiet ‘ding’ that was reminiscent of a train whistle.  “Worry about the analysis first.” It wasn’t what she’d intended to say, but she was suddenly not particularly interested in prolonging the conversation any longer, wanting instead to retreat to the relative peace and familiarity of her lab space.  “Good luck.” Nodding encouragingly, Osgood turned away and set off through the maze of corridors that would take her back to ‘her’ bit of the building and her own research. _

 

_ Pausing in the deserted kitchen nearest her lab, Osgood automatically checked in the vain hope that the coffee machine might be now fixed, but it was still turned off, meaning her excursion over to the other kitchen (and subsequent detour into John Hempson’s research project) had been necessary after all.  Putting down her coffee mug on the table, Osgood took advantage of the quiet to take out her mobile phone and read the text message that she already knew was from Kate, having recognised the message alert sound as the one that Kate had picked out for herself. _

 

_ Smiling, she read the message twice before double checking the time on her watch, phone and wall clock.  Visualising the tube map she did a quick burst of mental arithmetic and then typed out a reply. Message sent, she then put the phone back in her pocket and, humming what she would later realise was intended to be a haphazard medley of musical phrases from ‘The Sound of Music’, Osgood opened the fridge to discover that once again no one had thought to cancel the milk order.  With no one coming into the kitchen to make coffee, no one was opening the fridge to get the milk out. Having no desire to start producing cheese, Osgood set about tidying up whilst she waited for a reply… _

 

* * *

  
  


“Technically the helicopter was on the Thursday afternoon.” 

 

“Our first long weekend…” Anything more Osgood might have wanted to say aloud was replaced with a quick squeeze of Kate’s hand that she’d almost forgotten she was holding, actions communicating far more than words.

 

“Speaking of helicopters…” Kate returned Os’ squeeze and nodded in the direction of the increasing noise of the approaching helicopter.   “...at least we don’t have to do security…”

 

* * *

 

_ Kate heard her phone signalling that she had a text message as her coat emerged from the security scanner, reminding her that she’d failed to take it out of her pocket and send it through the x-ray scanner separately.  Fortunately, since they were flying to London on a UNIT plane, they were in the very VIP part of the airport where the security was tight but flexible. With fewer passengers and departures, there were fewer bags to search and scan, meaning the security agents could take a fraction longer to look at the x-ray images and, in Kate’s case, easily identify her coat contained a mobile phone. _

 

_ Smiling in thanks at the agent who passed her her belongings, Kate concentrated on making sure she had everything before stepping away from the end of the x-ray machine to wait for Win who, despite removing her uniform hat and jacket, was still going ‘ping’.  Having a moment of relative privacy, Kate pulled out her mobile phone and read Osgood’s message, not needing any time at all to think about what her reply needed to be.... _

 

_ “Sorry about that Kate.” _

 

_ “No problem General.”  Smiling, hoping she looked more calm and collected than she felt, Kate instinctively dropped her phone back in her pocket, hoping she’d actually pressed the send key firmly enough and looked at Win who was busy buttoning up her jacket, her uniform hat under her arm, bags at her feet. _

 

_ “Everything ok?”   _

 

_ “Fine, thank you.”  Kate concentrated on making sure she was ready to set off when the General was, taking the extra moment to work out what she was going to say next. _

 

_ “I’m sorry for dragging you to London with me, but you’re much better at this sort of thing than me.”  Jacket buttoned, Win picked up her bags and, seeing Kate was ready, set off at an easy walking pace in the direction of their departure gate, the short distances and deserted terminal a marked contrast to what it was like on the other side of the airport where the schedule flights moving people by the hundred were arriving and departing. _

 

_ “Of course General, happy to help.”  There were few in UNIT who would have been able to say that as sincerely as Kate had managed to, but then there were few in UNIT who had Kate’s innate understanding of the scientific research objectives of the organisation and the risks posed by aliens and their technology.  That she could withstand the full force of a Whitehall bureaucrat on waffling top form put her in an elite group of people within UNIT and meant she was already incredibly well known and respected within the upper echelons of Central Command, and that was without even mentioning her last name. _

 

_ “Are you staying in London for the weekend?”  Win wasn’t a natural prier of gossip, but she was under strict instructions from Flo to find out how Kate was coping after her divorce.  They hadn’t seen her socially since that Friday in August when the news of her divorce had come through and, whilst Win had been dutifully reporting to her partner that Kate seemed quite calm and content when they’d seen each other around the office, it wasn’t quite the same as having a chat. _

 

_ “Yes…” Before Kate could work out what else to say, Win’s phone rang and she was saved having to explain that the last minute request to accompany Win to her meetings on Thursday afternoon and Friday was not a problem as she never had plans of an evening in Geneva.  Nor was it a hardship to then spend the weekend in London before her own series of meetings with Whitehall on Monday which she’d been originally going to, not now that she’d seen Osgood’s reply...  _

 

_ By the time Win’s phone call had finished, they were on the plane and, being the only two passengers, were quickly in a position to take off.  As they climbed up to the cruising altitude that would see them speed to London, all talk of weekend plans was forgotten as their thoughts turned to their meetings... _

* * *

  
  


“And it’s not raining…not like that weekend...” added Osgood, looking up at the bright moon that would make all but the brightest stars invisible, the sky much clearer than when she'd landed an hour or so earlier.

* * *

  
  


_ Although it would be another two weeks until the clocks went back, the evenings were definitely ‘drawing in’ and, as Osgood exited Westminster tube station just after 6, it was already dark enough for the lights to be shining brightly from building windows, taxis and buses to be driving with their headlights on.    Stepping out of the general surge of people trying to pour into the tube station, Osgood sheltered under the cover of the office building as she watched the rain falling, the drops shining like strings of glass beads in the street lights. As she instinctively checked the time on the clock of St Stephen’s Tower, smiling as she reminded herself that it was only on the quarter hours would she hear the chiming of Big Ben, she refastened her waterproof jacket and stretched up to release her hood.  With the rain falling this heavily, even though it was only a short stride across Whitehall to where she’d agreed to wait for Kate, she wasn’t going to set off without adequate preparation.  _

 

_ Hood finally drawn up and fastened securely, cuffs neatly velcroed firmly around her wrists, zipper and velco providing a rainproof seal down her front, hem tugged down so that her jumper was covered, Osgood made one final inspection of her boots, pleased to see the laces were still neatly tied and the ends tucked in: an unfastened bootlace was not ideal, but a wet unfastened bootlace would be extremely unpleasant, and best avoided at all costs.  Satisfied that everything was in order, and with a final check that her satchel was still securely fastened and sitting squarely across her shoulders, Osgood emerged from her shelter into the wet crowds and soon had slotted into the line of people who were going the way she wanted to go, across Whitehall and down the side of Parliament Square. As she waited for the green man, one eye paying close attention to the puddle in the gutter that was just about large enough to be inviting to a ‘sporting’ driver keen to splash some off guard pedestrians, Osgood saw the next exit from the tube station on the other side of the road, an exit that would have saved her this wet road crossing. _

 

_ Wondering why she hadn’t spotted it as an option when she was in the station, she made a mental note to use it when it came to going back underground. Seeing the green man appear, she stepped off into the road, her hood making her continue to check left and right with exaggerated head turns as she crossed, being conscious that her peripheral vision wasn’t quite what it might be without the hood up.  Once more taking shelter from the building, this time provided by the architectural decoration on the facade of the Revenue and Customs building, she watched the people moving from building to bus to station entrance, their heads protected by the usual central London assortment of hats, umbrellas, waterproofs and newspapers. Taking advantage of her sheltered spot which, whilst not as comprehensively covered as the cover offered by the relatively modern office block on top of the tube station, was a perfectly good windbreak, she took off her glasses and, with the handkerchief she pulled from her trouser pocket, gave them a polish.  Replacing them on her nose, Osgood looked up towards the face of St Stephen as Big Ben began to chime: it was quarter past 6, she was just nicely early… _

* * *

 

“Only in London…we left here in the dry.”  Kate had borne Win’s teasing about her umbrella with good grace in Geneva and had the equally good sense to not make any comment when she’d then shared it with Win as they dashed the short distance from plane to car and car to building once they were in London.

 

* * *

 

_ “Thank you.” Smiling at the security guard as she handed over their building passes, Kate watched as General Bambera shook hands with their meeting host on final time before he turned and headed back into the building proper. _

 

_ “Is the General ready for her car Ma’am?”  At Kate’s quizzical look, the security guard explained apologetically, “double yellows Ma’am, even for official cars.  But I’ll get it brought round, if she’s ready?” _

 

_ “Thanks.”  Grabbing the handle of her suitcase again, Kate headed back across the reception area, conscious of the sound of the rain drumming on the atrium roof and rather glad of her umbrella. _

 

_ “Ah, Kate…” Win picked up her uniform hat from where she’d hung it on her suitcase handle and placed it squarely on her head, trying not to look too enviously at her colleague’s umbrella.  “Are you sure I can’t give you a lift?” _

 

_ “Thanks, but it’s fine.”  For what felt like the fifth or sixth time Kate tried to decline the well-intentioned offer without causing offence, only to realise she might have been misunderstanding something.  “Unless you need me at the Tower?” She really didn’t think this was the case and was cross with herself for not thinking it a possibility until it was potentially too late. _

 

_ “Hmm?” Win had been momentarily distracted by a sudden flash in the atrium which was, she concluded after not seeing anything alien, photographic or incendiary in their vicinity, presumably lightning.  “Oh, no. Happy to meet you at the MOD tomorrow morning...ten o’clock?” Looking at Kate’s carefully schooled expression, Win was suddenly struck with the thought that maybe her colleague was wanting to go to the Tower for some reason.  “Unless you want to meet at the Tower earlier? I didn’t think you’d want to but…” _

 

_ “I’ll see you at 10 tomorrow morning at the MOD General,” declared Kate, seeing that if they weren’t careful they’d still be stood here second guessing each others’ plans in the morning.  “Your car’s being brought round now according to Reception.” She tilted her head in the direction of the desk where she’d just returned their security passes. “Double yellows apparently.” _

 

_ “I best be waiting for it then!”  Following Kate’s lead, the General started to pull her suitcase along behind her as they walked to the front door, able to see quite how heavy the rain was as they got closer.  “Good night Kate, and thank you.” Win stopped just before they got to the building’s inner doormat, standing near enough to the door that she could see out to spot her car when it arrived but not so close to the door she was in people’s way. _

 

_ Keeping one eye on the lookout for her car, Win watched with interest as Kate failed to notice she’d not fastened up her raincoat but instead stepped outside and, taking advantage of the building’s shelter, opened up her umbrella before striding off down the shallow steps.  Unable, thanks to her vantage point, to see what happened next, Win was relieved to see her car appear from the opposite direction and slow as it approached the pavement level with the entrance to the Treasury. Not bothering to find either her raincoat or an umbrella for such a short distance, Win stepped out into the rain and walked to meet the car, seeing as she did so that Kate hadn’t actually got very far. _

 

_ Willing herself to concentrate on one task at a time, Kate refused to look up until after she’d got the umbrella open and held comfortably in her left hand.  Now moderately well shielded from the deluge, she checked that her briefcase was securely resting on her suitcase, grateful she’d got the one that had the slit on the back for the suitcase handle to feed through as, without that she’d not have had a spare hand for the umbrella.  Satisfied that she had everything, she turned to face the pavement, looked up and slightly to the left and grinned, properly grinned a broad, cheek stretching dimple producing most un-Lethbridge-Stewart like grin and stepped out into the rain, totally oblivious to her still unfastened raincoat that was now flapping in the light breeze that was accompanying the storm. _

 

* * *

 

“But you still haven't learned to do up your coat…” sighed Osgood, although her despair was entirely for show as now, unlike that first meeting in the rain outside the Treasury, she could reach forwards and do up her girlfriend’s raincoat, though it meant letting go of Kate’s hand.  “...against the helicopter downdraught…” she added, by way of explanation as, final button fastened, she leaned forwards and briefly brushed her lips against Kate’s, doing instinctively what she’d not had the confidence to do all those years ago. Any urge either of them might have had to lose themselves in the kiss was quite literally drowned out by the sound of the helicopter as it touched down onto the helipad.

 

* * *

 

_ “Hey you…” _

 

_ Osgood looked up from the puddle she’d been studying and smiled at Kate, vaguely conscious of a suitably somber ‘official’ car pulling away from the kerb four bollards away, having presumably picked up their passenger. _

 

_ “You’re getting wet.”  Osgood pushed her glasses back up her nose so they were more comfortable, having been dragged askew by gravity while she’d been trying to work out the rainfall intensity based on the number of drops falling in the puddle.  “And that’s a lovely dress,” she added, blushing when she realised that she’d perhaps made a total mess of saying hello to her girlfriend of just over a week. “Hi?” _

 

_ “Hi.” Kate’s smile was making her cheeks hurt but she couldn’t help herself - despite a truly tedious and pointless afternoon of hand shaking and circular discussions, she was happy, genuinely happy.  “Thanks…” She looked down at her herself, unable to remember what she was wearing without a visual prompt. When she’d got dressed this morning, her day was supposed to be spent entirely in her office reviewing reports before heading home via Mrs Woon’s.  Then she’d met an unusually disgruntled Win Bambera in the queue for the coffee stand at the office and had shortly after that found herself going home to quickly pack her suitcase for a lunchtime flight to London.  _

 

_ “I could hold your umbrella?” offered Osgood, catching her lower lip between her teeth as she waited nervously for Kate’s agreement, having to keep her hands firmly in her trouser pockets to stop herself from reaching forwards and doing up Kate’s raincoat. _

 

_ “Hmm?”  Kate looked at her umbrella in surprise, like she’d been expecting to see an ice cream cone rather than the wooden handle.  “Thank you.” Grinning sheepishly she shifted her hand slightly so there was room on the handle for Osgood to take a hold of it without them ending up in a tangle.  “I’ll probably be safer on the tube with it fastened…” She ran out of words when she felt the warmth from her girlfriend’s hand on her fingers as Os held onto the umbrella just above where Kate had been holding it, the heel of Osgood’s palm lightly resting on top of Kate’s fingers. _

 

_ “Probably…” agreed Osgood, finding Kate’s grin infectious and the urge to reach forward and do up Kate’s coat now forgotten as she instead found herself having to remember she was supposed to be holding the umbrella over Kate and not holding her hand.  “And drier,” she added when, thanks to a change in the wind direction, neither the umbrella or unfastened raincoat could stop some more raindrops landing on Kate’s dress. _

 

_ “And drier,” agreed Kate, reluctantly easing her fingers out from under Osgood’s hand but really not liking the feeling of the cold wet rain landing on her neck and collar bones.  Now she could feel how cold and wet the rain actually was, it was easier to let go of the umbrella and look down to make sure she did up the buttons up correctly, taking the opportunity to try and give herself a fairly stern talking to.  After all, she was forty not fourteen, not to mention they were stood outside the Treasury rather than behind the bike shed.  _

 

_ “What are you thinking?” asked Osgood, Kate’s frown interrupting her internal telling off for being quite so silly. _

 

_ “Mmm?”  Colouring slightly at being ‘caught’, Kate finished fastening her final button and quickly tied her raincoat belt in a rough double knot rather than messing around with the buckle.  “Did your school have a bike shed?” _

 

_ “No.  At least…”  Relieved to have something else to concentrate on, Osgood didn’t really notice as Kate reclaimed her umbrella and readied herself to fall into step alongside Osgood.  “...there were bike racks I think, with a corrugated plastic roof, but I’m not sure it could ever be described as a shed.” She turned around, taking care not to bash Kate with her satchel in the process, so that she was stood on Kate’s left side, the umbrella now between them, enabling her to lower her hood.  “I suppose a structure needs to have walls to be a shed?” _

 

_ “I think so.”  It was only when Kate realised she wasn’t consciously relaxing her shoulders and taking a steadying breath that she noticed she hadn’t tensed in embarrassment when she’d accidentally blurted out her question, hadn’t braced herself for a put down or despairing look.  This was Osgood, to whom every question was given the courtesy of a properly considered answer, answers that Kate knew generally generated more questions that she, in turn, was equally committed to giving suitable answers to. “At least, in gardens they always have a full set, but I think on farms they can have one open side...presumably aligned with the prevailing wind direction?  And train sheds have open sides for the trains to get in and out through.” This last piece of information was known courtesy of Gordy’s Thomas the Tank Engine obsession, which had lodged random pieces of trivia in her memory that did occasionally prove to be surprisingly helpful at the strangest of moments. _

 

_ “The bike racks at school were set up against the side of the sports hall.”  Osgood took a step forwards. “Westminster and the Jubilee line,” she added by way of explanation for where they were going.  “Which probably was why there was only a roof.” _

 

_ “Ah.”  Kate fell into step with Osgood, finding it easier to concentrate now she wasn’t looking at her girlfriend, although that only lasted as long as she didn’t think about how it had felt walking back to the station after their lakeside picnic last weekend holding hands.  “I don’t think my school had any bike sheds...at least, none that I can remember.” _

 

_ “Did you have a bike?”  _

 

_ “Not by the time I was old enough to have gone to school by bike...”  Kate glanced at Osgood, seeing the funny side of her conclusion and reassured to see that Osgood’s own instinctive smile looked kind.  “...which would explain why I have no memory of them.” She wouldn’t think about any other reason why bike sheds might be useful to teenagers at school. _

 

_ “I should be on the outside.”   _

 

_ Osgood’s sudden declaration as they turned into Great George Street and were confronted with traffic and puddle-filled gutters saved Kate from having to think about what Gordy was or wasn’t up to, finding the knowledge that her father was one of the schoolmasters little comfort as somehow, she suspected that any mischief a teenaged Gordy did get up to was probably with his grandfather’s tacit encouragement, or at the very least, his deliberate blind eye. _

 

_ “Oh.”  Kate obediently switched around her suitcase and umbrella so that the umbrella was now in her right hand and the suitcase was trundling along slightly behind her left side.  “Thank you.” _

 

_ They walked the next hundred yards or so in companionable silence, until they were almost at the line of red telephone boxes that somehow managed to still be bright and cheerful in the otherwise grey gloom of a wet evening rush hour. _

_ “I need to buy a ticket.”  Kate had meant to buy a travelcard on her way in from the airport to the meeting, forgetting that by travelling with Win she would be completely bypassing public transport as the General’s status within UNIT meant they’d landed at RAF Northolt and been met by a UNIT driver and car. _

 

_ “I’ve got you an Oyster Card.”  Osgood had stopped at the ticket office in the tube station when she’d arrived, knowing she was in plenty of time to meet Kate.   Although the yellow discs had appeared on the Underground ticket gates a couple of years earlier, it was only since the start of the year that you could use the plastic card system without having a season ticket or working for one of the bits of London Transport.  She knew Kate had used the Oyster Card system when she’d been working in London before she’d moved to Geneva, with the frequent trips between Westminster and Tower Hill underground stations made much easier with a prepay Oyster. Osgood, however, hadn’t been that interested in the system at first, as even when she’d bought her new season ticket she’d still had to show the paper ticket to the bus driver when she didn’t fancy the walk from the tube station to her flat.   “They now work on the buses too.” _

 

_ “Since when?” Kate glanced at Osgood as they avoided some puddles on the pavement, nearly at the entrance to the underground station.  “And does this mean you’re now a fan?” Kate had listened with amused good humour through more than a couple of pints and gin and tonics as Osgood had grumbled about the stop-start way the new ticketing system was being implemented when she’d been the Home Office-UNIT Liaison before moving to Geneva. _

 

_ “May.”  Osgood unzipped her waterproof just enough to reveal the inside zip pocket, in which she had put both her season ticket and the Oyster Card she’d got for Kate.  “And maybe.”  _

 

_ “Only maybe?” teased Kate, deciding she’d prefer to stop and take down her umbrella before she got to the top of the stairs down into the station, rather than try to do it while juggling her suitcase and not being swept off her feet by the autopilot following commuters. _

 

_ “Let me take your suitcase?” suggested Osgood when she saw Kate was about to start working out how she was going to juggle her suitcase, briefcase, umbrella and ticket with only two hands.  “And before you say no, I’m not really asking…” _

 

_ “I wasn’t going to say no,” said Kate quickly, holding out the still up umbrella for Osgood to hold over both of them while Kate quickly separated her briefcase from the suitcase handle and extracted the briefcase shoulder strap so she could carry it without running out of hands.  “But thank you.” She knew that Osgood was at times frustrated when her colleagues confused her politeness and inherent niceness with a lack of assertion just because she’d framed her proposal as a question rather than issued a command. At the moment it wasn’t that much of a problem for Osgood professionally but it could in the future if she began to work with more non-physicists, but that didn’t seem likely to Osgood so she wasn’t that bothered.  “And thank you for getting me an Oyster Card - I did take mine with me to Geneva but haven’t found it yet…” which must mean it was still in that horrific box of ‘paperwork’ she’d packed in a rush and hadn’t yet faced unpacking, preferring instead to shove it in the bottom of the wardrobe in the flat’s second bedroom that was, based on last weekend’s events, only going to ever be used as bedroom when her father or son visited, as anyone other than Os was going to be encouraged in the direction of a hotel, and Os was definitely not being encouraged in the direction of the spare room…. _

 

_ “Here…”  Not coping well with being complemented at the best of times, Osgood elected to concentrate on actions rather than words, so pulled out the Oyster Card she’d just bought for Kate to take once she’d got her briefcase on her shoulder.  “Westbound Jubilee…” She suddenly realised that she’d not actually ever told Kate quite where she lived at the moment, with their conversation last weekend covering what her flat was like in great detail but not its actual location. “We need to get off at Swiss Cottage.” _

 

_ “I’ll follow you,” declared Kate easily, accepting the Oyster Card and putting it in her raincoat pocket before handing over her suitcase in exchange for the umbrella which she promptly pulled closed, just as Big Ben began the lengthy three-quarters chime.  Rather than stand in the rain getting wet while they waited for the fifteen notes to sound, Osgood picked up Kate’s case and together, they joined the flow of people heading down into the tube. _

 

* * *

  
  


“Dr Stewart?”

 

“Yes?”  Kate had just finished tucking her blown about hair back behind her ears so she could see clearly again, and had therefore missed the sudden appearance of one of the Ops Duty Officers who’d arrived at a different corner of the helipad to assist with their boarding and departure.  “Thank you…” Kate always forgot that, despite much of the day-to-day business at Central Command automatically happening in French due to their Geneva location, anything involving the UNIT aircrews was conducted in English. With a confirming nod and smile from Osgood, Kate gestured for the Duty Officer to lead on as they went out to the helicopter that now had its door open waiting for them to board, another member of the Ops team already loading their luggage.

 

“Earpieces Ma’am?” asked the helicopter crewman as they prepared to shut the helicopter door, holding out the now standard UNIT bluetooth earpieces that they used when in helicopters and the like.  “Thanks.” Kate confirmed her wish with a thumbs up before accepting the two, adding in case the crewman could lipread or hear her over the engine. “...it would be rude not to with their inventor on board…” She passed Os the second bluetooth earpiece, not caring that she was being more ‘proud girlfriend’ than ‘Greyhound One’, but then the Geneva Ops staff had mostly known about Osgood as her girlfriend before she’d subsequently started working for UNIT at the Tower anyway.  They’d never deliberately hidden their relationship from UNIT or colleagues, with Osgood coming to the occasional Geneva based social if they’d coincided with her visits to see Kate

 

“Thank you, umm…”  Os accepted the conventional looking earpiece which was, at first glance, not unlike most hands free mobile phone earpieces.  She wasn’t the best at receiving compliments as a rule, and this had hardly been a major ‘invention’. Fed up with increasingly complicated log in requirements whenever she needed to connect to a UNIT field network, she’d originally worked out how to store all the possible logins she might have to provide on a USB stick with an associated fingerprint scanner.  From that first step of being able to connect her laptop automatically to the UNIT networks wherever she was, she’d gradually improved the design until now these bluetooth earpieces would connect into the helicopter radio communications channels the wearer was authorised to access, all from a tap of their index finger. Making sure she was already set to the cabin channel that meant she would just be heard by Kate and not the pilots, she put the earpiece on. 

 

Finding the earpiece wasn’t immediately settling on her ear without needing to move her glasses a bit, thinking the ones they had in the Aston hadn’t been this tricky to get to stay put, it wasn’t until they’d actually taken off that she was finally able to talk to Kate and be confident of hearing her reply.  “...I probably need to revisit the design…” she mumbled, not impressed with herself when she saw they were already airborne, as had this been an alien incident they were flying to, she might have missed a fairly fundamental chunk of the situation update, rather than what she’d actually missed, which had presumably been Kate confirming that where they were being flown to was where she was expecting. 

 

“Perfectionist…” teased Kate, leaning back in the surprisingly comfortable seat and looking at Osgood who was now looking out of the window at the Geneva skyline.  “...and brilliant..” Kate moved her knee a fraction as the helicopter gently banked and turned towards the East, instinctively not wanting to squish Os although logically she knew their seatbelts would keep them in their respective seats.   The movement brought the fingers of her right hand, which were resting on her right leg just above her knee, into light contact with Osgood’s, their knuckles touching. 

Moments later and without any real conscious thought by either of them, their fingers had tangled together as they watched the moonlit lake pass underneath them as the helicopter made short work of getting to the other end of Lake Geneva, their weekend away now well and truly begun...

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

“Connard…” growled Kate, through gritted teeth as she shut the door of their hotel room rather forcefully behind the male staff member who had just delivered their luggage from the helicopter and insisted on putting one case in each of the suite’s two bedrooms.  “..quel salaud…” Had she been not already been trying to interrupt his monologue about the suite’s features and generally outstay his welcome in the misapprehension that his performance was earning him a tip, she’d have been calling him all manner of insulting names in English, but her brain was currently switched firmly into French, so each bump of her head against the now locked and shut door was accompanied by another colourful, French insult.  “Branleur…merde...” Her stream of insults slowed when she heard the distinctive sound of her girlfriend’s inhaler. “La vache…” She pushed away from the door and turned around, intent on finding Os as fast as she could, not having noticed anything in the suite that might have triggered Osgood’s allergies - in fact, she’d spent a fair bit of what little time she’d had in the last week or so liaising with the hotel to ensure that there wouldn’t be anything.  “Os?” Not seeing her in the main sitting room, she checked the small kitchenette area on her way to the larger of the two very luxurious bedrooms, which was where she had last seen her. “Os!”

 

Sitting on the end of the bed, her cheeks slightly puffed out while she nodded her head from side to side, counting the seconds she needed to hold her breath for, was Osgood.   Recapping her inhaler, she gave her girlfriend a little wave, unable to speak until she could exhale again.

 

“I’m s…”  Kate didn’t get any further into her attempt at an apology because she found herself on the receiving end of one of Osgood’s rarely seen glares, all the more impressive because she was still holding her breath.  “...sure there’s a glass I can fill with water,” she corrected, knowing Osgood was glaring at her because she didn’t like it when Kate set about apologising for things Osgood didn’t consider needed apologising for.  In this instance Kate didn’t agree - she did feel she could have made it clearer to the hotel that an oblivious homophobe incapable of taking conventional hints was not an acceptable luggage porter and room guide, or just booted him out the first time he was a bit, well, blinkered.   But she also knew that when Os was recovering from using her inhaler was the wrong moment to try to explain her reasoning, so went into the en suite bathroom instead. Moments later, she returned with a glass of water, just in time to see Osgood putting her inhaler away in her pocket.  “Here…” Kate held out the glass and tried to work out what might have upset Os’ lungs.

 

“Thanks…”  Taking the glass with her left hand, Osgood caught hold of Kate’s hand with her right hand, stopping Kate from pulling away from her while she had a drink.  As much as she wanted to talk to her about what had just happened, Osgood also needed to get rid of the taste of the inhaler from her mouth. “His aftershave made me want to sneeze but it was trying not to laugh that did for me,” she explained when she could finally speak without worrying about having a burst of breathless wheezing, putting the no longer needed glass on the floor.   Without letting go of Kate’s hand, Osgood stood up so she could look her still upset looking girlfriend in the eye. “It could have been worse,” she dismissed, not overly bothered by his ignorant insistence that they would each enjoy their respective bedrooms. As far as Osgood was concerned, there was a time and a place for trying to educate small-minded people, and this was neither the time nor the place for them to be wasting their time thinking about that particular challenge, especially when she had a much more pressing problem to solve.  “But I do have one question?”

 

“Only one?” joked Kate, still feeling rattled by the encounter, although she was starting to see Osgood’s point - he could have been obnoxious or argumentative about their relationship as opposed to his oblivious and ignorance which had ultimately just been rude and frustrating.

 

“Assuming we’re only going to be using one bed at a time…”  Os let go of Kate’s hand once she’d slipped her other hand around her girlfriend’s waist, inside Kate’s suit jacket, delighted to find Kate hadn’t retucked her shirt to leave the office. “..but also trying each one as they both look lovely…” Each was decorated in its own style, with different views out over the lake and mountains, making Os think they should try both.

 

“In the name of science?” teased Kate, deciding not to bother even attempting to find a gap in Osgood’s shirt as it would no doubt be neatly tucked in again, but instead aiming for the pockets on the back of her cords which, if memory served, only had a single button to overcome.  

 

“Something like that,” agreed Os, only to be struck by something which caused her to almost smirk, a rarely seen expression for her that would be missed by most, but not Kate, even without her glasses.

 

“What?”

 

“I’m trying to imagine the peer review…”

 

“Ah.”  Kate tilted her head to the side as she considered how she might avoid any and all mood killing mental images.  “Never said anything about publishing…” In fact she’d considered that to be one of the highlights of her second career (or was it third? She had no idea and now wasn’t the time to have that particular think) as a UNIT scientist was that very little of their research was published in the traditional scientific journals, meaning she hadn’t had to endure an academic peer review for decades.  “Need to know basis surely?” She tried not to smile in triumph when she finally got the button undone on Os’ back pocket and was able to slip her hand into it. “Classified eyes only?”

 

Osgood’s reply was brief and concise….and reminiscent of this same weekend all those years ago, as she quickly, and with no warning touch, pinged the back of Kate’s bra, only unlike all those years ago, this time her hands were now inside Kate’s shirt, possibly further proof that Kate’s shirts were sentient and all too willing to untuck for Osgood….or maybe Kate was just easily distracted.

 

“Sorry…”  That, knew Kate, was an apology Osgood would accept as the ‘eyes only’ joke had been a bit corny, and probably warranted a change of subject.  “...you had a question?” she prompted, hoping it was a question that she could answer without breaking their relaxed mood, or see Os move her hands too far...

 

“Mmm…”  Osgood had moved her hands, but only as far as she needed to in order to start tracing patterns across Kate’s back, starting with the constellations that they hadn’t seen from the helicopter because of the bright moonlight.  It therefore took her a moment to remember what her question had going to be. “Oh, yes…” Her fingers stilled, but she didn’t pull her hands away, hoping her question didn’t completely ruin the mood. “...why do we have two bedrooms?”

 

“Because I don’t know the width of our bathtub.”

 

“Which bathtub?”  Accepting the question at face value, Osgood began to try and remember what she could of their various plumbing installations, and resumed tracing squiggly patterns on Kate’s skin, but this time they were alternating triangles and pentagons.  “Our one? The guest one, or Scotland?” She was fairly certain Kate wasn’t thinking about the small bath in her old flat that the boys now rented from her, so didn’t include it, although technically it probably counted as a bathtub that could be described as ‘ours’ since it was within a property owned by one or other of them.

 

“Ours, or Scotland…” Kate chewed her lip, having forgotten about the one in what was technically the ‘guest’ bathroom although she couldn’t remember the last time they’d had a guest stay at the house that wasn’t either of the boys. “...and I can’t remember us ever having a bath in the guest one.”   She had fond, mostly shower based memories of the bathroom in Os’ old flat, 

 

“Oh.”  It was Osgood’s turn to have a think, able to remember having the occasional bath in the guest bathroom over the years, but she didn’t think that was what Kate had meant, because she’d said ‘us’, which saw Os remembering when they’d been to the cottage in Scotland in August and had some lovely baths together…  “Oh!” 

 

“Oh?”

 

“You’re right, we haven’t had a bath in...”  Her nose twitched, making her glasses shift, as she tried to stop herself thinking about that bathroom as ‘the boys’ bathroom’ which was how she usually thought of it, especially as they both seemed incapable of remembering to take all their toiletries with them when they left, leaving it with a permanently ‘male’ character somehow.  “...there.” Osgood’s follow up question of ‘what have bathtubs got to do with why we have two bedrooms’ was loudly unspoken.

 

“The suites are all different, including the bathrooms…”  Shyly, Kate rested her forehead against Osgood’s, not quite feeling confident enough to maintain eye contact, but not wanting to put an increased distance between them by looking away either.  “...and not knowing what size the Scotland tub is, I had no reference point to compare an answer to so couldn’t ask...” Kate had absolutely no problem asking idiotic sounding questions of anyone as long as the answer she then obtained was useful, but asking a question, even a sensible sounding one, knowing she could do nothing with the answer was a waste of time and made her feel an idiot.

 

“There’s a tape measure in my bag…” Osgood had come from the Tower, so her rucksack still had in it  most of her usual ‘might be needed’ assortment of things, which included a tape measure, two sticks of differently coloured chalk, some small clear plastic bags, brown and clear adhesive tape and a black felt tip pen.  The Stanley Knife and large Swiss Army Knife were locked in a drawer in the lab at the Tower - fortunately she’d remembered at the last minute that they would not survive airport security. “...and a UK Standard bath is 700mm wide, but that’s from the outside of the bath at the top.”  

 

Osgood’s calm explanation of the dimensions of the bath saw Kate lift her head up and blink, not expecting bathtub dimensions to be standardised but otherwise unsurprised by the precision of her answer.  Osgood knowing the most unexpected facts and being confident enough to share them with her was one of the things Kate had always loved about her, although this interest in plumbing was a new one as far as Kate knew.

 

“700mm?”  Kate and the metric system had a bit of an awkward relationship, with some units like litres and kilograms easily ‘pictured’ by the biologist, while others, mostly those to do with distance measurement, never really clicked for her.

 

“Two Foot…” Osgood canted her head to the right as she quickly worked out the exact answer then rounded it into something suitably approximate for their conversation that didn’t involve too many decimal places.  “Three and a half inches. Approximately.” It was actually nearer to 5/16 inches but ‘half’ would do, and anything more precise than that would mean she would probably have to move her hands away from teasing patterns on Kate’s back to stop a tickle attack.   All of which meant ‘half’ would do under the circumstances, especially given Kate’s tendency to round things.

 

“That’s…”  Kate moved her hands around to rest on Osgood’s hips, her lip caught between her teeth as she thought back to her last bath, which had been in the nondescript tub in the usual hotel UNIT used in central Geneva.  “...wider than I’d have guessed, based on…experiences.” 

 

“That’s the width of the space in the room the tub needs; the width of the…”  Osgood wasn’t quite sure what to call the space in the bath that was filled with water, though she knew how to calculate the water capacity of the space, even if it was asymmetric about its midpoint.

 

“Wet bit?”  Kate couldn’t be bothered trying to work out what the technical term might be, preferring to encourage her girlfriend to continue with her explanation.  

 

“...wet bit,” agreed Osgood with a long-suffering smile that Kate thought of as more ‘loveable twit’ than ‘daft fool’ and was familiar enough with that she didn’t need her glasses to spot it, “is smaller, as there is the thickness of the bath sides to consider, and the angle of the sloped sides which reduces the overall width and length of the bottom surface of the bath…”  Blinking, Osgood warmed to her theme, having spent a few minutes looking at bathtub dimensions on the internet last month, wanting to understand why the tub they had in Scotland had felt bigger than their London one, despite the bathroom in London being larger than the croft’s one. “...a…” She was surprised by the feel of Kate’s lips on her jaw.

 

“Keep talking…” mumbled Kate, her lips brushing against Osgood’s earlobe as she spoke.  “...angle of the…” she prompted, as she teased her way away from her girlfriend’s hypersensitive ear and started to kiss and trace the taut lines of the muscles in Os’ neck.  

 

“Umm…”  Os swallowed thickly and closed her eyes, trying to force herself to picture the diagrams that had accompanied the articles she’d read, “...a steeper angle reduces the overall…”  Kate’s lips had got down as far as her shirt collar and had stopped when she’d stopped speaking. “Umm…” Trying to work out what she’d been talking about, Osgood also arched her neck, trying to give Kate a hint as to what she’d really quite like to happen next.  “...overall water capacity of the bath…” The hint had worked, and somehow, Osgood managed to keep talking while Kate kept kissing… “...providing depth for soaking but a quicker fill time and…mmm...” Osgood’s hands moved quickly down her girlfriend’s back and slipped inside the waistband of her trousers, meaning she suddenly had physics on her side and could, with a gentle and sustained application of pressure coupled with a bend of her knees to lower her own centre of gravity…..

 

“Oooof!” The rapid change in position saw Kate’s lips lose contact with Osgood’s neck and land somewhat heavily on a combination of Osgood’s thighs and her own forearms as instinct took over and Kate tried to break her fall with something other than her girlfriend’s rib cage.  “Os?” Even before she’d really worked out what had happened to herself, Kate was concerned for her lover.

 

“I meant to do that…” mumbled Osgood, trying to blow the strands of blonde hair that had landed over her face out of the way.  “...but forgot about your jacket and pass…” She’d forgotten Kate’s suit jacket contained her phone and reading glasses, and that she was still wearing her building pass on her waistband.  In tumbling them back onto the bed, she now had the lower edge of the hanging pass digging into her left hipbone and the phone in Kate’s pocket had thumped her right hip hard enough to make her now worried about the damage they might have done to Kate’s glasses as they’d crashed against Osgood’s left trouser pocket, in which was her inhaler.

 

“Easily sorted…”  Kate snuck a quick kiss onto Osgood’s jaw and then pushed herself back into a standing position.  Removing her pass from her waistband and slipping it into the pocket with her phone, she took the inhaler Osgood was holding out to her and put that in the pocket with her glasses.  Two strides later, she was stood by the decorative armchair and was slipping her jacket off her shoulders and dropping it onto the seat. Stepping out of her lime green heels, she looked across at Os, who was lying on the bed, her legs hanging over the side, propped up on her elbows and making no attempt to conceal her appreciation of her lover...a gaze Kate returned, enjoying the sight of Os relaxed, her brain helpfully reminding her of the deceptively strong muscles and soft curves that were currently hidden by Osgood’s clothes.  “...you happy with room service?” 

 

“Depends…”  Osgood’s tongue traced around her dry lips as she admired the sight of Kate as she pushed up onto her tiptoes, stretching her calves and ankles now she’d removed her shoes, apparently oblivious to her untucked shirt.  “...is it 24 hour?”

 

“It’s not that late…”  Kate wasn’t sure what time it was, but certainly before 10pm, which by Geneva standards, was not too late.  “...and yes, it is.” She’d checked that when she’d booked as a matter of habit - UNIT’s unpredictable schedule meant she’d stopped staying anywhere that wasn’t able to do a sandwich at 2am some years ago.  

 

“Good, because I think I’d like a bath first,” decided Osgood, not only liking Kate’s implied suggestion that their weekend might involve a relaxing soak together, but liking the idea of having the bath more than she liked the idea of food just yet.  The bath attached to this bedroom had taps in the middle of the long side, so they could sit facing each other and, if it was long enough, she could give Kate’s calves rub in the warm water as a surprise...

 

“Oh.”  Slightly disappointed, but not all that surprised given Os had started the day in London so was no doubt feeling the effects of a long day, the flight to Geneva and the time zone change, Kate took a half step back from the bed.  “I’ll go start the water for you then unpack for us.”

 

“For us?”  Osgood pushed herself back up into a more upright seated position and frowned at Kate, not understanding why she wouldn’t be doing her share of the unpacking.  “What will I be doing?”

 

“Having a bath?” reminded Kate, wondering what had caused Os to be confused by her statement, not thinking it especially unusual that one or other of them would pack or unpack for them both.  “You said you wanted a bath before we ordered food…” At least her big lunch meant her stomach wasn’t interrupting them with an attention seeking gurgle, though she wasn’t going to take any chances and carried on into the bathroom, raising her voice so Os would still hear her.  “Did you get very wet on your way from the airport?” That was the obvious reason Kate could come up with for Osgood’s sudden urge for a bath.

 

“And in your office….” muttered Osgood now able to understand how Kate had managed to so completely misinterpret what she’d thought had been a fairly clear-cut plan for them to both try out the bath, together.  Standing up, she followed Kate into the bathroom, surprising her when she slipped her arms around her waist from behind and resting her chin on shirt clad shoulder, unable to kiss anything as Kate’s hair was loose and in the way.  “...I meant have a bath with you…”

 

“Oh.”  Kate relaxed against Os and closed her eyes, feeling a bit foolish for misunderstanding but sufficiently experienced at being a fool that she no longer worried about it when it happened.  “At least I’m consistent,” she murmured, feeling less embarrassed at completely missing Osgood’s romantic intention than she might have felt had they not been together all these years, not the least offended when she heard the quiet rumble by her ear that was her girlfriend chuckling.  “What? I’m consistent…” she protested, knowing she was very consistent in her love for the woman currently holding her.

 

“Mmm…”  Os had, having managed to avoid inhaling her girlfriend’s hair, resumed her efforts to eliminate Kate’s shirt as an obstacle.  Taking care to unfasten the next button she’d found without tugging too hard on the fabric, she continued their conversation. “...I think so…” agreed Os, parting the untucked shirt tails carefully, exposing a triangle of skin that she’d be able to slide her hand onto.  “...except when you’re unpredictable…” 

 

“My unpredictability is consistent…” reasoned Kate, grinning in spite of her token protestation, knowing that the reputation that preceded her throughout Whitehall, the Tower and Geneva was most often characterised as ‘unpredictable’.  “But that’s not what I’d meant…” Her hands were still resting loosely on top of Osgood’s, meaning she was aware of her girlfriend’s arms moving but, without looking down, she had no idea why they were moving. “I meant…mmm…” Kate lost her train of thought when she felt her shirt front move and, for a brief moment, she felt the slight chill of the temperature controlled air-conditioned air brush against her exposed stomach before it was replaced with the warm, soft touch of her lover’s hand that was now heading up towards her ribs.

 

“I know what you meant,” assured Osgood, reaching up with her other hand and moving silky blonde hair out of the way so she could tease her way down taut neck muscles with her lips and tongue until she found  _ that  _ spot that did such wonderful things to her girlfriend.  “And I love you for it…” she continued, pausing in her licking and tasting so Kate wasn’t having to fight to concentrate.  

 

Kate had always, right from the very beginning, somehow managed to find a way of being concerned for Os without patronising or undermining her, and to take care of her without smothering or belittling Osgood either.  Even now, years later, Osgood couldn’t really explain what exactly it was that Kate did or didn’t do, nor how it was different to what her previous girlfriends, or worse her mother, had done, she just knew there was something very different about Kate, and Kate’s way, that made Os feel strengthened by that love rather than stifled.  “...but right now…” Osgood’s hand worked its way higher up Kate’s body, her fingers following the curve of gently rising and falling ribs as her thumb trailed lazily behind, following a more central path that soon saw it reach the band of her girlfriend’s bra and the simple, practical cotton of the cup. “...and for the rest of this weekend…”  Osgood dragged her thumb up over Kate’s breast, feeling the soft flesh give under her light pressure, only to then find the contrasting firmness of a tightening nipple. “...try to remember how much I fancy you.” Osgood punctuated her statement with a firm flick of Kate’s tight nipple and compounded the pleasant agony she was creating for her lover with another teasingly licked trail along the line of muscles straining in Kate’s neck as she tried to withstand Osgood’s delicate assault.

 

“I’ll try…” promised Kate, her voice hoarse and low as she tried to force the words out of her dry mouth, inadvertently using a tone of voice that did similarly interesting things to Os as Os was currently doing to her.  “Am I still running us a bath?” she managed to ask, picking her words carefully and focussing on anything except the feel of Osgood’s thumb against her nipple and lips on her neck. 

 

“Get undressed first…” declared Osgood, leaning forwards slightly so that as she stepped back Kate was able to instinctively grab hold of the counter the sink was set in, before nimbly turning and leaving the bathroom, leaving a thoroughly befuddled and rather overheated Kate to wonder what she was up to.

 

“Tease!” called out Kate when she finally decided Os wasn’t immediately coming back, amused rather than worried by her sudden absence.  “Where’ve you gone?” she called out, composure and higher brain function restored now she didn’t have the distractions of Os’ far too talented fingers and lips to contend with.  “And why can’t I run the bath?”

 

“Because…” announced Osgood, returning to the bathroom still fully dressed and holding something.  “...I went to get my tape measure.”

 

“Don’t I measure up?” Oblivious to her mostly unfastened, entirely untucked shirt, Kate leaned back against the sink counter and slipped her hands into her trouser pockets, suddenly radiating the devilish confidence that made her so effective as Greyhound One to those that knew her through UNIT, but to Osgood was just her Kate, relaxed, confident and charismatic, lovable Kate...who when she looked at Osgood like that managed to get her insides doing things that defied even the strangest of gravitational anomalies known to UNIT.

 

“Wrong sort of tape…” mumbled Os, adjusting her glasses as she pulled out the end of the steel tape from its the palm sized plastic case, sliding the locking catch across with her thumb so the metre or so that she’d pulled out stayed put.  “Doesn’t do curves…” she continued, mostly to herself as she tried to ignore her audience and remain focussed on what she wanted to know, which was the width and length of this bathroom’s bathtub at its top and bottom, the latter requiring her to lean over into the ‘wet bit’ of the tub, explaining why she hadn’t wanted Kate to start running the bath.  “Straight line point to point...” continued Osgood, making a mental note of the measurements she was taking as she methodically and quickly assessed the tub’s inner dimension. 

 

“Not sure about curves…” grumbled Kate, not needing to look down at herself to be reminded of what she thought of as her rather curve free figure, much preferring to admire the view Os was giving her as she did whatever it was she was doing.  “...but definitely not straight, I’ll grant you that.”

 

“Mmm?”  Not having heard the end of what Kate was saying, Osgood stood up, releasing the lock on the steel tape and automatically kept the webbing between her thumb and index finger out of the way while the tape shot back into the case.  “Grant me what?”

 

“Doesn’t matter.  What’s the verdict?”  Some might have thought it odd that Osgood travelled with a tape measure and had elected to interrupt their flirtation to use it to measure the bathtub, but Kate wasn’t ‘some’.  “Are we re-enacting Archimedes’ bathtime?” She rather hoped not, as fun as it was to be conducting scientific experiments with her girlfriend, Kate wasn’t sure she wanted to either flood the bathroom or leap from the bath at speed, assuming she eventually was allowed to get in the bath that was.

 

“The other one is better.”  Osgood hadn’t forgotten Kate’s sigh of pleasure when she’d stepped out of her heels, and while this bath was generously proportioned in terms of depth and width, the other bathroom had better geometry for what she had planned.

 

“Tip top.”  And, with a wink and a lightning quick kiss, Kate headed towards the other bathroom, detouring only so as to grab her discarded jacket, knowing that at some point her glasses or Os’ inhaler might be useful.  

 

Everything else could stay where it was.

 

Everything that was, except Osgood.

 

“Coming with me?” called out Kate, tossing her jacket over the chair in the other bedroom, knowing she’d probably left Osgood a bit flat footed as for some reason, her easy acceptance of whatever it was her girlfriend’s plan was, still caught Osgood off-guard at times.

 

The double meaning of the question caused Osgood to groan and grin as, abandoning her tape measure, she headed for the other bathroom.

 

“Finally!”

 

“I wasn’t that slow…” protested Osgood, repositioning her glasses as she thought about trying to calculate exactly how much of a headstart Kate had had over her, before deciding not to worry as whatever the headstart had been, Kate had used it wisely and managed to get the bathtub filling and lose her shirt.

 

“I was talking about your shirt…” Kate reached forwards and grabbed a handful of the fabric, tugging gently on it to both make her point and encourage Os nearer.

 

“What about my shirt?”  Aside from it being one of her favourites, and one that Kate had given her before Os joined UNIT, Osgood couldn’t think of anything significant or notable about it.  “Oooo...ooooh….” Feeling Kate’s fingers running up the skin of her back and the sudden change of sensation as her bra was undone solved Osgood’s latest mystery for her: without thinking about it, she’d untucked her shirt as she followed Kate to this bathroom, achieving in a second what Kate had hitherto failed to manage.

 

As their lips touched, Osgood’s hands settled first onto Kate’s bare shoulders and then ran down her back, pausing for a moment to release the catch on Kate’s bra and then continuing to trail their way down, fingertips starting to swirl and trace patterns on the soft, smooth planes of her girlfriend’s back, patterns that Kate was mimicking on Osgood’s back, now unimpeded by any obstructing fabric.

 

“Mmm…”

 

“Mmmm?” Reluctant as she was to interrupt their kissing, Kate knew Osgood’s ‘mmm’ had to be for a reason.

 

“Archimedes…”  Osgood bit her lip, struggling to finish speaking as Kate hadn’t actually stopped with her kissing, just relocated her lips away from Os’ so she could speak.  “...bathwater…”

 

Kate stopped her kissing and looked at Osgood, quizzically.

 

“Principle proof, not philosopher having a bath,” explained Osgood succinctly, removing her hand from where it had apparently decided to venture inside Kate’s waistband and pointing to the bath which, while not yet full, did have an ever rising water level and was rather fuller than Kate had expected to see.  “Two people have…”

 

“...a greater displacement volume than one…” finished Kate, letting her hands slip out from under Osgood’s shirt so she could turn off the taps, her bra dropping to the floor in the process.  “Is that why this bath was better? Because it fills quickly?”

 

“Bonus actually.”  Osgood’s face disappeared from view as, the top couple of buttons on her shirt undone, she uncharacteristically pulled it off over her head rather than undoing all the buttons first.  “It’s narrower and a bit longer than the other one.”

 

“And narrow is good?”  Kate tried not to sound sceptical, but her main memory of bath dimensions was discovering that their tub in London was, while not narrow exactly, not quite as wide as the one in Scotland, and had resulted in a lightly bruised elbow or two immediately thereafter.

 

“Narrower is good,” confirmed Os as, fully undressed, she stepped into the bath at one end and sat down, nodding to Kate to do the same at the other end.

 

“Friendly…” teased Kate, slightly bemused as to why Os was insisting that she sat so far away, and why she was still wearing her glasses, but sinking into the warm water nevertheless, her legs stretching out in front of her as she leaned back, the warmth of the water started to help muscles tight from a long week of Geneva being Geneva relax.  “Oh…” Eyes that had drifted shut opened wide when she felt Os’ fingers wrap around her ankle and pull it gently towards her, causing Kate to instinctively reach out and steady herself with her elbows against the sides of the bath until she was confident of not giving herself an accidental dunking. “...narrower is good…” she acknowledged, realising she’d have been struggling to keep her head out of the water in a tub that was wider if Os was going to pull her legs quite literally out from under her and… .”....ooooo…”

 

“Sore?”  Os paused, barely having done more than work out where the knots in Kate’s foot and calf might be, not quite sure how to interpret the noises she was hearing.

 

“Only if you stop…” sighed Kate, discovering she could let her head drop back against the edge of the bath and still see Os, or no doubt more accurately, gaze like a dopey lovesick fool at Os.  “....mmm….this wasn’t the plan you know…”

 

“Oh?”  Osgood’s smirk suggested that she wasn’t entirely believing that her girlfriend had a different plan, but she was always prepared to give Kate the benefit of the doubt, if only for a minute or so until she started digging herself a hole.  She did however refrain from resuming her massaging exploration of Kate’s foot and calf until she’d heard what the plan was supposed to be.

 

“I was planning on spoiling you…”  Even without her glasses, at this distance Kate had no difficulty spotting her girlfriend’s ‘daft fool’ look.  “What?” 

 

“Silly idiotic thing…” Osgood lightly ran her fingertips down the arch of Kate’s instep, about the only place Kate was even slightly ticklish before resuming her massage, “...whatever makes you think we aren’t doing both?”


End file.
